How do massive immigrant regularizations affect a country's security?

BarcelonaWhen the current extraordinary regularization process for immigrants is completed, up to 150,000 people who live and in many cases work in Catalonia –almost half a million throughout Spain– will go from not having papers and living in the underground economy, to being able to formally enter the labor system with legal residence permits. The regularization will have evident consequences in many areas, such as the labor market or social security, but research also indicates that it may have consequences for security.

Over the years, dozens of regularization processes have occurred in many parts of the world, and various academics have taken advantage of them to try to analyze whether they affect crime rates and whether immigrants reduce their probability of offending with a regular administrative status. One of the main conclusions is that yes, regularization can help reduce crime.

“I believe my findings, along with other related work, support the idea that regularization decreases criminal activity among immigrants," states Scott R. Baker, professor of banking at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, in statements to ARA. In a 2015 study, Baker thoroughly analyzed the effect of a regularization that affected nearly three million immigrants in the United States in 1986. Baker's main conclusion is that this process led to a decrease in crimes of between 3% and 5%. In absolute terms, this translates into a global drop of between 120,000 and 180,000 crimes.

Baker states that this data implies "a much higher impact" in the case of crime committed by immigrants. Specifically, he points out that in counties where there were more legalizations, crime fell more than in counties where there were fewer. Furthermore, the expert points to another important element: the decrease was due to a reduction in property crimes, i.e., theft, robbery, or fraud. "Immigrants who have a greater capacity to enter the formal labor market and earn higher wages tend to offend much less. This is mainly manifested as a stronger decrease in property crimes," argues Baker.

Economic necessity

Returning to the Catalan reality, in crimes against heritage or property –not in others that are more serious or more violent– there is a higher presence of foreign-born detainees and prisoners than native-born ones. For example, foreigners are almost 60% of prisoners for crimes against heritage. These crimes are often linked to poverty and various data extracted from Catalan prisons demonstrate this, as 80% of perpetrators of property crimes who have ended up in prison have had problems finding work. The same Baker says they are crimes of "economic necessity".

Baker, however, is not the only one to reach this conclusion. Paolo Pinotti is dean and director of the chair of economic analysis of crime at Bocconi University, in Milan, and has also analyzed the effect of regularizations in two extensive studies. In both, he concludes that this process reduced crime and points to the same trigger as Baker. “The decrease in the probability of committing crimes is access to opportunities to obtain legitimate income after obtaining legal status,” he states in statements to ARA.

First, the academic analyzed immigrants who applied for a residence permit through the Italian system known as Click Daysin 2007. With this system, the Italian government allowed foreign workers to fill vacancies in sectors such as tourism or agriculture through work permits.

In another study, Pinotti analyzed foreign inmates who were released from Italian prisons thanks to a mass pardon in August 2006. The sample included about 800 Romanian and Bulgarian inmates who gained their freedom and who, a few months later, obtained legal status due to their countries' entry into the European Union.

Pinotti warns that the design of the two studies only allows for estimating the effects "in the short term", but that the conclusions are that there is a "50% decrease in the probability" of immigrants reoffending. "However, evidence from other data is consistent with permanent reductions," adds the academic.

Another conclusion is that the reduction in crime was more pronounced in regions that offered better economic and labor opportunities for legal immigrants, especially in northern and central Italy. Furthermore, a sharp decrease was also noted in drug trafficking offenses. In Catalonia, 60% of those arrested for drugs in the last 15 years are foreigners.

Substitution and attraction

Francesco Fasani is a professor of economics at the University of Milan and studied the four massive regularization programs carried out in Italy between 1990 and 2005. His conclusions align with those of other experts: regions with a higher proportion of immigrants in a legal situation experienced a reduction in crime rates among non-EU immigrants. However, he also warns that this effect did not always last over time.

Fasani, consulted by ARA, sees several reasons for this. On the one hand, crime can be reduced in a group of people, but "substitution" can also occur. The clearest example he gives is the drug market. "Consumers demand drugs, which creates demand for traffickers. If regularization induces many immigrants who previously trafficked drugs to stop doing so, this does not eliminate the underlying demand," he says. However, there are other effects that can be taken into account, such as the attraction of regularization – more undocumented immigrants may arrive – or that those who do not manage to regularize their situation fall into the illegal market.

"The best way to reduce immigrant crime –just as with native criminals or any other group– is to offer better alternatives to criminal activity," concludes Fasani, who is also a former researcher at the UAB and a former professor at the Barcelona School of Economics. "Regularization can have positive effects on crime, but this is not the primary effect," he adds.

Fasani's research also includes a study in the United Kingdom that compares asylum seekers with immigrants from countries that joined the EU in 2004, who had more rights and facilities than the former. "The results show that areas that receive a larger number of asylum seekers experienced an increase in property crimes, of modest magnitude, but economically significant. On the other hand, we find no evidence of an increase in crime associated with EU immigrants," states Fasani.

Empowerment to report

Regularizations, however, can still have further effects on crime data. Several studies show that they can not only help reduce criminality, but also encourage immigrants to report crimes. The study Empowering migrants: Impacts of amnesty on colombian crime reports, published in 2020, analyzes the impact of the regularization of more than 200,000 Venezuelan immigrants in Colombia in 2018. The data reveal that, while the level of crime did not change significantly, there was an increase in reports of sexual crimes. In this regard, the study suggests that legalization empowered victims to go to the authorities without fear of deportation.

After analyzing the cases of Italy, the United Kingdom, Colombia, and the USA, one of the big questions is whether these studies can be extrapolated to the process currently underway in Spain. "Although I am not aware of similar studies in Spain, the mechanism seems quite general. As Spain is similar to Italy in terms of economic structure and migration patterns, I would trust in predicting similar reductions in crime," points out Pinotti. And Baker agrees: "Yes, I think the results are instructive for the current plan in Spain, as it also involves a regularization that will allow for much greater access to the labor market," he points out. "In general, yes, I would expect the same mechanisms to work. It's hard to see why they wouldn't," argues Fasani.