Immigrants Less Prone To Violence, ‘Antisocial’ Behavior, US Study Says

LOS ANGELES – Immigrantsare less likely to shoplift, skipwork or school, hurt people orengage in other “antisocial”behaviors, despite being poorer,more urbanized and less educatedthan people born in theUnited States, a new study basedon a sweeping national surveyshows.The study, recently published inthe journal Social Psychiatry andPsychiatric Epidemiology, buttressesearlier research based onarrests and crime rates. Theintriguing pattern has alreadychallenged conventional theoriesabout the ties betweenproblem behaviors, poverty andother disadvantages.“It turns traditional theories ontheir head,” said Michael G.Vaughn, a Saint Louis Universityprofessor and one of theauthors of the study.“Immigrants often come to theUnited States with very little.They are socially disadvantaged.But they’re not contributingmuch to the crime rate.”Researchers used data from anationally representative surveythat included roughly 43,000people to compare the actionsof immigrants to people born inthe U.S. They looked at dozensof self-reported behaviors,including bullying, stealing,racking up traffic tickets andother troubling actions, bothviolent and nonviolent.All in all, researchers found thatimmigrants were about half aslikely to say they had engaged insuch behaviors, even afterresearchers controlled for alcoholand drug use disorders,mental health conditions, gender,race and ethnicity and otherdemographic variables.The same pattern held whenresearchers zeroed in on immigrantsfrom specific regions,including Africa, Latin America,Europe and Asia. People bornin the U.S. were roughly fourtimes as likely to report engagingin violent behavior thanimmigrants from Asia andAfrica, and three times as likelyas immigrants from LatinAmerica. European immigrantscame closest to people born inthe U.S., the researchers found,but were still much less “antisocial”than native-bornAmericans.The results also paint a worrisomepicture of what it meansto adapt to the American way:Immigrants who came to theU.S. before they becameteenagers were more likely tohave troubled behaviors, and thelonger people spent in the country,the more likely they were todo so.They were still much less proneto those problem behaviors thannative-born Americans, however.The study estimated that forevery year an immigrant spendsin the U.S., he or she is 1.9%more likely to be violent and0.9% more likely to commit actsof “nonviolent antisociality,”such as stealing or cutting class.“It’s fascinating because no onereally knows for sure” why it’shappening, Vaughn said. Ifyou’re an immigrant who wantsto be in the U.S., “you’re probablywanting to play by the rulesand keep out of trouble.”He theorized that feeling mightfade as immigrants spend longerin the U.S. That pattern suggeststhat boosting immigration probablywill not combat crime inthe long term, since immigrantsand their children slowly cometo act more like otherAmericans, Vaughn and his fellowresearchers wrote.The data used in the study camefrom two waves of the NationalEpidemiologic Survey onAlcohol and Related Conditions,the first in 2001 and 2002, thesecond in 2004 and 2005.Courtesy Los Angeles Times