287(g)

• Published date: 01 May 2013
• Date: 01 May 2013
• Author: Scott Akins
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12042

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

LOCAL IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT

287(g)

State and Local Enforcement of Immigration Law

Scott Akins

Oregon State University

More immigrants arrive in America than in any other country in the world.

Although immigration is an essential part of the American story, to some the

recent and nearly unprecedented immigration flow spells societal ruin and to

others it portends societal renewal (MacDonald and Sampson, 2012). Of course, a massive

wave of immigrants arriving in America is nothing new, and it is only the primary countries

of origin that have changed. In the years surrounding the turn of the 20th century, just less

than 15% of the population of the United States was foreign born, a figure approximating

that of today (Gibson and Lennon, 1999). Then, as now, much political rhetoric has

connected recent immigrants, whatever their country of origin, to a variety of social ills,

implying or overtly stating that such problems would not exist if not for the immigrants. The

theme, consistently, is that immigrants undermine the social fabric of America, instilling

a fear of “what the ‘foreign element’ can do to America” (Portes and Rumbaut, 2006:

118). Prominent in such rhetoric is that recent immigrants pose a greater risk of criminal

offending than do the native born. A belief in the “criminal immigrant” is most widely

held by the native born, especially those with an inflated view of the relative size of the

immigrant population (Wang, 2012). Fueling these beliefs, politicians have at times been

guilty of flatly misrepresenting evidence on the extent of immigration and on the proportion

of crime committed by newly arrived immigrants (Casey, 2006; Hagan and Phillips, 2008;

Sampson, 2008), which in turn exerts considerable influence on public policy related to

immigration regulation (Ch´

avez, 2001; Hagan and Palloni, 1999; Lee, 2003; Martinez and

Valenzuela, 2006; Massey and Pren, 2012; Rumbaut, 2009).

The facts are that that since the early 1990s, as the immigrant population (especially

the undocumented population) increased sharply to historic highs,1the rates of violent and

Direct correspondence to Scott Akins, Department of Sociology, Oregon State University, 307 Fairbanks Hall,

Corvallis, OR 97331-3703 (e-mail: sakins@oregonstate.edu).

1. In terms of raw numbers, immigration is at a historic high. As a percentage of the total population,

current figures approximate but may be slightly below the figures reported for the decades

surrounding the turn of the 20th century.

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12042 C2013 American Society of Criminology 227

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 12 rIssue 2