Undocumented Immigration, Terrorism, and Hate Crime

• In Event: Immigration and Crime: A Global Perspective

Abstract

Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the issue of immigration has become increasingly discussed in terms of national security. At the fore of these discussions are concerns regarding undocumented immigration. Yet, despite substantial public, political and policy attention to the issue of undocumented immigration and terrorism, we know relatively little about the relationship between unauthorized immigration flows and terrorist activity. We attempt to fill this gap by combining newly developed estimates of the unauthorized population with multiple data sources on crime, terrorism, and socioeconomic context from all 50 states and Washington DC from 1990 to 2014. We then leverage this unique data source to examine the longitudinal, macro-level relationship between undocumented immigration and various measures of terrorism. Results from fixed effects negative binomial models suggest that increased undocumented immigration over this period is associated with neither terrorist events nor terrorism prosecutions. The findings do suggest, however, that undocumented immigration flows were associated with increased numbers of anti-Hispanic hate crimes after the 9/11 attacks.

Authors

• Michael Light, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Julia Thomas, University of Wisconsin - Madison