Paper Example With Annotated Bibliography on Mercy in Immigration

Introduction

People migration from one country to another is a not a recent phenomenon; it is an issue that has been in the limelight for many years as a result of the formation of new immigration laws and policies. In this essence, there has been an increase in anti-immigrant opinions as well as humanitarian immigrants in search of a better life by those running away from their countries. Indeed, people leave their countries because of countless reasons. Some of the migrations are well-planned where people leave their nations in search of economic opportunities and better jobs. Nonetheless, to some the decision to migrate is as a result of war, violence, poverty as well as limited chances of development. It is unfortunate that over the past few years stories regarding mental illness among immigrants have been on the rise because of deportation. In light of the above statement, this paper performs extensive research by different researchers and scholars regarding the challenges that face immigrants across the world.

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Adelman, Robert et al. "Urban Crime Rates and the Changing Face Of Immigration: Evidence Across Four Decades." Taylor & Francis. N.p., 2016. Web. 30 Apr. 2019.

According to Adelman et al. there is little support in relation to the enduring suggestion that the rise in immigration has a connection with the increase in crime. Despite the fact that neoclassical economic and classical criminology perceptions project immigration as a probable cause of the rise in crime, several experimental studies have proved contrary. Since the 20th-century immigrants suspected propensity for crime has been a critical theme in the political arena. For instance, currently this theme is being expressed by President Donald Trump, but it has received a sharp contrasting outcome from carried our research on the subject matter. The issue of immigration in the United States is currently heavily debated based on security and safety concerns. One side of the argument is fighting for restricting immigration policy which argues that allowing more immigration results in increased crime rates. On the other hand, the antagonist side ague by stating that the base of restrictive immigration policy is based more on false stereotype and prejudice. It is unfortunate that there a number of reasons that makes it impossible to extract a clear message regarding the topic of study making it look challenging. To begin with, there is a lack of uniformity in design. There is a significant disparity particularly in terms of the assessment of primary independent variable, immigration measures of the dependent variable, temporal design I their observed samples. Secondly, statistics in recent studies have been found to be divergent.

Feldmeyer, Ben et al. "Immigration and Violent Crime in California, 1980-2012: Contextualization By Temporal Period And Race/Ethnicity." Ideas.repec.org. N.p., 2019. Web. 30 Apr. 2019.

Over the recent past, there have been increased concerns regarding the social problems as well as violence in the United States, which has been interweaved by major social trend the rise in the immigrants' levels. The large population of these immigrants comes from South and Central American, and Mexico has greatly contributed to the development of Hispanic populace that is the leading ethnic minority group in the US currently. Unlike in the previous immigration waves during the 20th century, the recent rise in immigration has become a contentious issue toward the country's policy agenda. A good population of the country's population together with diverse views from members of the public have a mentality that the recent immigration shifts are negatively impacting on the country's way of life and greatly contributing to crime as well as other dangerous forms of violence such as robbery and murder. As a result, this is the reason for the recent anti-immigrant policies in some of the states which are mainly found on the assumption that the increased crime rates, as well as violence, are because of the influx of immigrants. Consequently, similar to the experience of their predecessors during the 20th-century policymakers and researchers are faced with a responsibility to understand the effect of immigration on the country's criminal justice system, the native community and to the immigrants themselves. In this essence Feldmeyer et al. use the violent crime of California Data in addition to the United States Census data which document immigrant movement for the past three decades to find out the relationship between immigration levels and the crime rates by ethnicity.

The intent of Feldmeyer et al. is to outline the difference between the crime patterns in a location with a massive and developing immigration population and regions with less immigration population. Feldmeyer et al. use California data about violent crime to provide the most extended source of data about Hispanic crime across the United States. Feldmeyer et al. make use of the Hispanic population in California because it much reflects that of immigrates with a Mexican origin to address the public anxieties as well as political rhetoric that surrounds Mexican immigration effects on crime. The sentiment about Mexican immigration in 2016 was voiced by the presidential primary race regarding Mexican immigration after politician complained that Mexico was not providing its best immigrants. This research address a number of limitations of the existing study about violent crime and immigration. Feldmeyer et al. point out a limitation in terms of empirical research which investigates the immigration-crime connection over time. The research explores issues of immigration-violence for more than three decades. In addition, the study indicates that most of the analysis regarding the link between immigration and crime, which focus on the international evaluation of crimes that are violent with less attention paid to probable subgroups dissimilarity. The research analysis investigates the impact of immigration on the total extreme crime macrosocial controls like unemployment and poverty. While it is a common practice in the social science assessment, the impact generated from these statistical models tends to cover the whole relation between crime and immigration.

Light, Michael T, and T Y Miller. "Does Undocumented Immigration Increase Violent Crime?" Criminology: an interdisciplinary journal vol. 56, 2 (2018): 370-401. doi:10.1111/1745-9125.12175

According to Light and Miller very few studies have more criminological importance as well as public policy salience in comparison to comprehending the effect undocumented immigration about violent crime. Even though the connection between crime and immigration has been at the frontline of criminological investigation since the 20th century at the Chicago School, this matter has taken additional significance in the past three decades as a result of the United States experiencing an upsurge in immigration. However, regardless of the substantial study focus to the link between immigration and crime there are gaps that remain evident in the literature. Light and Miller assert that immigration-crime has been primarily centred to evaluating the overall foreign born populations due to the small number of data which accounts for illegal immigrants exclusively. In this sense, the problem is that immigrants are treated as a homogeneous group of people because they fail to account for vital differences across different types of immigrants. Consequently, studies in regard to undocumented immigration remains a considerable gap in relation to immigration and crime studies.

A recent meta-analysis study involving macro-level relationship between immigration and crime carried out in the last two decades indicates that there is no one research that explored the movement of unauthorized immigration. For all these period, research has been exclusively based on the relationship between illegal immigration and violence. While this studies are informative, it has a number of limitations, which calls for further review. Most important Light and Miller argue that previous carried out studies about the relationship between crime and immigration and crime is only a cross-sectional evaluation which restricts both substantive questions under consideration in addition to the analytical leverage in attempt to answering the research. According to recent research, substantive cross-sectional analysis cannot be provide a central answer to the analysis to the central question that encourage criminological argument regarding illegal immigration: which asks if the increase in undocumented immigration has resulted in increased rate of crime. Since illegal immigration has become a vital process that keep on unfolding each and every time, it is evident that cross-sectional analysis are not suitable for application in responding to questions regarding immigration and crime. Furthermore, the methodological difference between cross-sectional analysis as well as longitudinal study in relation to immigration and crime investigation is a satellite one. Consequently, Light and Miller assert that in the meta-analysis process, the findings for the study underscore the reality that the choice between cross-sectional analysis and longitudinal study process are key which possibly affects the outcomes as well as the conclusion in this field of study. As a result, the scholars conclude that since longitudinal studies offers higher analytical objectivity like better capacity to regulate for cofounding effects, much emphasis is supposed to be placed on the longitudinal research outcomes. Nevertheless, until present, the literature does have a longitudinal evaluation of the effects of the undocumented relation between immigration and the rate of violent crime.

In this essence the researchers' looks forward to fill past research gaps related to the relationship between undocumented immigration and violence of crime over the past three decades. According to Light and Miller the number of undocumented immigration has increased by approximately three time that from approximately 4 million to almost 12 million in the past three decades. Consequently, the undocumented immigration accounts for more than 33% of the rise in the total number of foreign immigrant's populace over this time. As a result, this wave of immigration has produced a significant public anxiety about the criminality of non-authorized immigrants that has led to immigration reforms as well as public policies seeking to decline on the purported crimes connected with immigration that are not documented. Certainly, the assumptive connection between illegal immigration and violence for crime has stand out as the key assertion in regard to the anti-immigration story in the public, media as well as political discourse. Subsequently, due to the assertion connectivity to the anti-immigration narrative amongst the political, public and media arena this study has become pivotal to most of the contagious to the reform about immigration policies over the past few years.

On the same note, there have been concerns regarding unauthorized immigration that has been the federal government's key criminal law enforcement priority in the past three decades. Statistics shows that in between late 1980s and late 2000s the figures by the United States Border Patrol officers has been steadily rising by five-fold yet the budget for border enforcement has increased to twenty-fold.