Illegal immigration: causes, effects, and policy considerations

Illegal Immigration

This study will seek to ascertain if the requirement to enforce immigration laws by local law enforcement agencies will be detrimental to society. The reasoning behind this hypothesis is that the federal government, along with a number of states, are passing laws that require local and state law enforcement agencies to take certain actions when confronted by situations that may include "illegal immigrants." A variety of problems can be predicted from this scenario. Predicted problems include; overcrowded jail space, an overwhelmed justice system, a reluctance on the part of immigrants to report crimes, emboldened criminals that will commit even more crimes, and more heinous crimes committed by the criminals.

The study's hypothesis is that local law enforcement agencies that are forced to assume new roles and duties in regard to enforcing federal and state immigration laws will experience internally lower morale, more confusion, and less cohesion, and externally; a higher crime rate, lower reporting of crimes involving both legal and illegal immigrants, longer response times to local crimes, and additional taxpayer expenses for more limited services.

The study's variables are that local law enforcement agencies are being pressured to "cross-deputize" their members in order to focus their law enforcement efforts on apprehending illegal immigrants. Many of the new state and federal laws are asking local police officials to determine who are the illegal immigrants.

After they have determined the status of the immigrant, they are asked to arrest, confine and hold these individuals until they can be deported back to their country of origin. These actions cause the law enforcement agencies to make a decision as to whether they will accept these new responsibilities or reject them. If they are accepted, the local police officers are then cross-deputized and trained to find and arrest illegal immigrants.

Some local law enforcement agencies have balked at what they consider an effort to turn local police into federal agents, enforcing federal laws. They wonder why they have to focus their attention on fighting illegal immigration oftentimes distracting them from what their real purpose is, that of protecting local citizenry and providing service to the local community. Some police agencies have gone so far as to refuse to enforce these laws. The internal debates taking place throughout these agencies can cause divisiveness amongst the individual officers, confusion as to what is expected, lower moral, less cohesion and staffing problems.

Many of individual officers have feelings similar to Park City Police Chief Wade Carpenter who decided not to cross-deputize his officers. His reaction to a new Utah law that asked local enforcement agencies to participate in cross-deputization was that it was not a focus he wished to place on his officers. "We're having a hard time staffing our shifts as it is," he said. And "this moves the criminal liability from federal officials to local law enforcement" (Smart, 2009).

Carpenter is not the only one to feel that way. Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds agrees with Carpenter and refused to cross-deputize his officers as well. Enforcing the new law is not something he takes lightly. He said that doing so "would erode trust within the immigrant community. They would fear calling law enforcement to report criminal activity" (Smart) and an additional fear of his is that "lawbreakers within that community would feel emboldened" (Smart). These perceptions on the part of law enforcement officials are not new, and they are an integral part of this study, they are part of the underlying reasons why many of these laws are looked at with askance in regards to local enforcement.

According to Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin, reporters for Phoenix's East Valley Tribune, there are at least three other direct negative effects to the change in focus on the part of local police units. Those three effects are: "people wait far longer for deputies to arrive at life-threatening emergencies. Detectives make arrests in far fewer criminal investigations. Taxpayers are spending millions of dollars to enforce federal immigration laws" (Gabrielson, Giblin, 2008).

The major variables to the study will look to determine whether the perception of police officers and the communities that they serve are positive, neutral or negative in regards to enforcement of illegal immigration and what effects those perceptions may have both internally and externally on the police officers and individuals in the communities.

Since this is a quantitative study, the study will look to measure the variables and the effects by quantifying perceptions with a point scale.

A questionnaire will be sent to a number of local police officers using a Likert Scale type instrument that will ask the respondents to read and respond to a series of statements by indicating whether they strongly agree (SA) agree (A) are undecided (U) disagree (D) or strongly disagree (SD). The positive statements will be valued at 5-4-3-2-1. Points will be totaled and a high total score across the positive statements will indicate an overall positive attitude (agreeing to the statements).

Since the study is seeking to determine hypothetical scenarios in regards to perceptions and the effects of those perceptions, it is necessary to point out that this is not a scientific study with resulting quantitative discoveries. The study is based on feelings, and though the researcher is attempting to quantify the results, the bias of many individuals will surely show through and will not necessarily by scientific in nature.

Literature review

A key issue for this study is who has the responsibility of responding to issues dealing with illegal immigration. A recent research report submitted to the Department of Justice found that "the federal government has primary responsibility for responding to these issues but cannot do it alone" (McDonald, pg. 21).

The report also found that "research suggests that state and local law enforcement are making an independent contribution to the effort against transnational criminality but are only willing to play a supportive and primarily criminal law enforcement role in dealing with immigration issues" (McDonald, pg. 21).

The reasoning for reluctance on the part of many of the state and local entities is due to the local nature of the enforcement issue. Many of the communities that these police officers work for count on the illegal immigrants for labor in the factories and in their fields. The citizens view the immigrants as integral parts of their community. Without these workers, the local economy may falter or fail causing financial hardships to everyone in the community, not just the illegal workers.

Another reason for the reluctance is that many state and local law enforcement officials take a dim view to enforcing federal laws that are deemed by many to be unenforceable. Not only are they difficult to enforce, but federal laws can be costly to local governments. Without federal funding to pay for the expenses, local governments sometimes have to foot millions of dollars in expenses for ongoing enforcement. These are expenses that have to be passed on to the local community. Many times the local citizens seek lower taxes and expenses, not higher, especially when they deem the money 'ill spent'

McDonald's report documented other reasons why local enforcement of federal laws can be detrimental.

He told those law enforcement agencies that decide to focus their efforts on apprehending illegal immigrants that "many Mexican-American citizens were offended at being questioned. They filed multiple lawsuits" (McDonald, pg. 20). Filing lawsuits has seemed like a national pastime during the past decade. Lawsuits can be expensive to defend against, time-consuming and deleterious to the communities that must suffer through them. It seems likely that the key question here does not concern the lawsuits (although they are the likely outcome of many of these scenarios) but does concern how police officials are trained in enforcing these laws.

Another example of lawsuits being filed en masse is when the police department of the city of Chandler, Arizona attempted to rid the city of illegal immigrants by rounding them up and deporting them in July, 1997. "The efforts of the police to rid the community of non-citizens unlawfully present in the U.S. led not just to deportations, but to the filing of a $35 million civil rights lawsuit against the city of Chandler brought by U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents" (Pendleton, pg. 2). The question that can be asked then becomes; how do police officers tell the difference(s) between an illegal immigrant and a legal citizen of foreign nationality?

This question is a much more difficult question than it used to be. According to McDonald, local and state law enforcement officials have nearly always been allowed leeway in stopping citizens who may have entered the United States illegally.

As early as the 1930's "in the southwest border states where large numbers of Mexican workers had entered legally and illegally, state and local law enforcement officials routinely held suspected illegal aliens for the INS" (McDonald, pg. 16). Another point was that as late as the 1970's many of those same agencies had policies to deal with illegal immigration. One policy was "to stop and detain aliens upon reasonable suspicion of violating federal immigration laws" (McDonald, pg. 16). Since that time, however, the U.S. society has taken a much more liberal viewpoint, with many of its citizens decrying an invasion of privacy when being questioned by law enforcement officials. This outcry is being heeded by law enforcement officials and immigrants throughout society.

Many officials are now reluctant to apprehend individuals based solely upon their looks or something as flimsy as 'reasonable suspicion'. Discovering that those they apprehend are productive, responsible citizens with jobs and families is a deterrent for apprehending similar individuals in the future.

Recent literature shows that another reason for reluctance on the part of law enforcement officials to vigorously pursue those individuals who may be in the United States illegally is the effect it will have on those citizens that are here legally but live in the same geographical areas that house the illegal immigrants. Many experts believe that vigorous enforcement will mean a lower reported rate of crime, but not necessarily a lower rate of crime. The difference between the two, is that criminal acts may still be taking place, they just might not be reported as often.

This is oftentimes due to the reluctance of the victim to 'get involved', especially with law enforcement officials who may view the victims with suspicion. This is especially true for immigrants, recent or not, many of them are still acclimating themselves to American culture, which in many cases is quite different than there own.

Sometimes police officers, even with all of the training they receive, can be perceived as being unsympathetic towards the victims they are attempting to assist. Many times the victims have been exposed to police officers who may seem to be less than caring in nature. One recent article states that the victim's reluctance to report violence is that they feel there is no empathy from the responding police officers. The article states that victims "often invoke law enforcement's lax response in specific threats to further harm the victim" (Rosenfeld, 2008, pg. 257). If police officials are seen as too lax in this case, they are oftentimes seen as too overbearing as well. Displaying an overbearing attitude towards citizens who are already concerned about whether they will be questioned on their status as citizens can only add fuel to the fire.

Additionally many of these victims of violence are already reluctant to report such abuse due to the stigma attached to such actions. One recent article tells the story of a Muslim immigrant who denied that her husband beat her after police arrived at her door. The article states; "she was thinking of her Muslim immigrant community and the role she was expected to play: faithful wife, submissive mother" (Smith, 2008, pg. 20).

Even more importantly in this particular situation was the fact that the woman was also worried about how she would continue on in daily life without spousal support. According to Smith the wife was "thinking of her children and how she would support them without an income" (Smith, pg. 20).

These factors, coupled with the fear of arrest and deportation, would likely increase the possibility that legal (and illegal) citizens would not report crimes, which means that criminals could then operate with impunity, knowing that even if they are recognized, their crimes would go unreported. The secondary effect to this scenario is that the criminals would feel even more emboldened without deterrents and would commit crimes more frequently and of a more violent nature. Many times crimes are seen as happening outside of the home, but domestic violence is a prevalent problem in today's society.

There are a wide variety of situations that law enforcement officials deal with on a daily basis that are risky and are of a violent nature. A recent study estimated "that between ten and twenty percent of children in the United States are exposed to domestic violence annually" (pg. 1). Their numbers were based primarily on those children suffering violence in the home. The numbers did not include the street violence, or the witnessing of violence by homeless children and families that are exposed to those situations on almost a daily basis. Another recent study states, "violence is one of the most prevalent elements in the lives of homeless families with young children" (Swick, 2008, pg. 81).

The study continues by defining the various forms of violence which these families are faced and concludes, "violence disrupts the normal bonding between parent and child" and that "it isolates and degrades families" (Swick, pg. 81).

Switching the focus of local police enforcement efforts could indirectly affect the lifestyles and living situations of many domestic violence victims. These include not only the spouses, but affects the children living in the households as well. One recent study concludes that "victim assessments have significant potential to inform practice" (Cattaneo, Bell, Goodman, Dutton, 2007, pg. 429) and the actions of the responding police officers can either undermine or reinforce that assessment.

One recent study concludes, "that children and adolescents living with domestic violence are at increased risk of experiencing emotional, physical and sexual abuse, of developing emotional and behavioral problems and of increased exposure to the presence of other adversities in their lives" (Holt, Buckley, Whelan, 2008, pg. 798). This study finds that children who are experiencing domestic violence are prone to acting out, and many times experience emotional and behavioral problems which in turn influences and touches those who they come in contact with, including other family members and classmates. Another study verifies these findings by concluding, "that children from troubled families significantly decrease their peers' reading and math test scores and significantly increase misbehavior of others in the classroom" (Carrell, Hoekstra, 2008, pg. 1).

If police officials are focusing on illegal immigrants, and the illegal immigrants live in many of the same neighborhoods as legal citizens (many of them of foreign descent) many children, and adults as well, will already be impacted by their actions. Many immigrants already have a natural reluctance to interact with people in authority, and this natural reluctance can be exacerbated with questioning by police officials. This reluctance to report crime can do nothing but backlash against those very officials who are seeking to help. The issue is much more complex than just 'getting rid of illegal immigrants'.

In one recent article Gail Pendleton expresses the idea that "if police are seen as agents of INS in the eyes of the community, many battered immigrants will be reluctant to call the police and take the initial steps necessary to become independent of the abuser out of fear of being asked about her immigration status" (Pendleton, pg 1).

As stated above many of the immigrants that are being questioned are of legal status, yet they are still viewed with suspicion by many in law enforcement. This same mistrust in evident in many individuals residing in immigrant communities as well. Much of the mistrust is justified. Pendleton writes of an example in Salt Lake City that displays the justification. "Police officers and federal agents bust into Rafael Gomez's business, the Panderia La Diama and force all his customers and employees to the floor while they searched for drugs.

The local and federal agents officers were operating on the later disproved theory that undocumented Mexicans made up 80%of the illegal drug trade in Salt Lake City" (Pendleton, pg. 3).

It is events like this that cause as much angst in the community as in the police departments that initiate such actions. Many experts believe that a much more conservative approach should be take when it comes to dealing with individuals in the community. One expert wrote "it's emotion and humanity that make the connection in our global community" (Gardels, 2007, pg. 7).

Both sides of the argument would do well to keep that in mind. A recent report by the Los Angeles Police Department reiterated the fact that "Community Policing is based upon a solid relationship between the police and the community…By working together, the police and the community can reduce the fear and incidence of crime and improve the quality of life in the community" (Los Angeles Police Department website).

Theory

The theory that perceptions will affect the manner in which illegal immigrants report crimes as well as being an influential factor in additional crimes being committed seems to be a valid argument. Other studies have shown that there are connections between police actions and the perceptions of citizens who view those actions.

Literature also provides a solid foundation of evidence that allows for the belief that if police officials are given a directive to seek out, apprehend and deport illegal immigrants the resulting backlash would be strong against them, both from legal citizens and illegal immigrants as well. The literature shows how certain immigrants in situations of domestic violence have displayed reluctance to report crimes, and with that reluctance has come an emboldened criminal with more crimes that are more vicious in nature. It is a simple matter to show that the ones who are affected the most by the non-reporting of crimes are oftentimes children and spouses. It is equally simple to understand that perceptions are conceived based on observations, and if those observations are based on experiences with police officers intent on discovering illegal immigrants then the resulting actions can often lead to a mistrust in authority, a stigma on those who report the crimes, and a community that is fearful of police authority instead of relying on those who are charged with the responsibility of protecting the public.

The importance of proving this hypothesis and theory is that it may offer an insight to those in the community that would benefit from the insight in the most productive manner. Those that benefit would include not only the individuals in the police department that make the decisions of where to employ staff and officers in the most efficient method, but it would benefit the citizens in the community as well. This is true for both legal and illegal immigrants in the community.

The benefits of the study will far outweigh the amount of time, effort and cost invested in the study. Time and effort allocated to the completion of the study is minimal when compared to the effects on people's lives that this type of study can have. By asking people to ponder their perceptions on a controversial issue such as illegal immigration, the study is forcing them to take a honest look at their perceptions. Since oftentimes perceptions become reality, or at least are viewed by many as reality, then if those perceptions can be examined and changed to reflect a more positive and proactive stance, then not only does the involved individual benefit, the department benefits, the community benefits and the overall society benefits.

Expenses to complete the study will be minimal in scope. Like the benefits derived from perception examination, the costs will prove to be much less than the benefits of the study. Proving the validity of the thesis as compared to the expense of the study will also be cost effective. Discounting the fact that the researcher will be spending time developing the instruments to test the theory, the real dollar cost will be the amount of money spent on printing the questionnaires, the mailing costs to mail the questionnaires, and the dollar amount spent on collating the data from the respondents. If the data proves to be as beneficial at providing answers to communities on various approaches to illegal immigration, then the dollars spent will be cost effective.

Millions of dollars are spent each year addressing this issue.

According to the East Valley Tribune (Arizona) who investigated efforts by the Maricopa County Sheriffs Office (MCSO) on arresting illegal immigrants "rampant overtime spending on immigration operations drove the agency into financial crisis and forced it to close facilities across the county" (Gabrielson, Giblin, 2008). The reporters who investigated the MCSO found that "illegal immigration arrests actually are costing county taxpayers millions of dollars" (Gabrielson, Giblin, 2008).

The dollars spent on arresting the illegal immigrants are sometimes justified by the agencies spending them by stating it is a huge problem, and the majority of citizens desire the problem to be addressed effectively. The head of the MCSO Sheriff Joe Arpaio is quoted in the article as saying "The people agree with what I'm doing, a very high percentage…So I do know I'm doing the right thing for the people I serve. That's what I'm supposed to be doing, serving the people" (Gabrielson, Giblin, 2008).

The study seeks to provide answers using a much more cost-effective method. Instead of using millions of taxpayers dollars, the study will spend far less and provide potentially far more savings by providing the data to make sound decisions regarding the amount of time, effort and expense spent on chasing down and apprehending those illegal immigrants living in our society.

Methodology

The population that the study seeks to observe is the local police departments most likely to understand the illegal immigration problem.

These police departments have either been cross-deputized, are in the process of being cross-deputized or are contemplating whether to go through cross-deputization or not.

Along with this population is the public that these police departments serve. In many geographical areas where there are large concentrations of legal immigrants, many illegal immigrants probably reside there as well. Law enforcement entities from these areas are prime potential study participants. Disseminating questionnaires to the officers of the law enforcement units in these areas makes sense, as does the logic to distribute questionnaires to the citizens in these areas as well.

In this particular study there will be no control group but there will be a comparison group. The public being served by these police departments will be the comparison group. Each group will receive approximately the same number of questionnaires, and though no assurances can be made concerning the number of respondents from each group, they should be relatively close in count. Different areas will receive questionnaires, which adds more groups to the study. Adding additional groups to the study oftentimes rules out specific threats to the validity of the study. If the study's design was such that it only included one municipality it could be said that members of the two groups of respondents might (citizens and police officers) are too close to the problem.

Other drawbacks may include previous interactions between the two groups that may have set a bad tone, or that one or the other groups may be cognizant of the study's purpose. Including other groups in similar situations is usually advantageous and helps to minimize any potential selection bias the study might encompass.

Drawing a sample from the proposed populations will depend entirely on how many individuals respond to the questionnaire. The researcher will ascertain areas of interest through public records. The data can be provided by such entities as the census bureau and other government departments. Since the hypothesis is that local law enforcement agencies that are "cross-deputized" in order to focus on enforcing federal and state immigration laws will face a number of internal and external problems, the researcher can seek to ascertain the law enforcement entities that have recently undergone that change. It would therefore make sense that upon discovering these entities, that the surrounding geographical areas are experiencing the most immediate impact from that event. Researchers will then randomly select addresses from surrounding areas that can be mailed the questionnaires.

Since the study is largely hypothetical, and because the researcher is not sure of what the outcome(s) of the questionnaire will be, the study would be most effective in using qualitative evaluation designs that can be quantified. The reasoning behind using this design is that it will assist the researcher in articulating the cross-deputization process.

It will also assist the researcher in determining the impact that cross-deputization has on police officials overall as well as on the citizens of the community that the police officers serve.

The proposed study will seek to mail questionnaires to 10,000 individual households in 10 different geographical areas. These areas will be verified as being geographically close in proximity to police enforcement units that have recently been charged with a new focus towards enforcing state and federal laws regarding illegal immigration. At the same time, questionnaires will be disseminated to each officer of that particular unit (10 units total). This number will vary depending on the size of the law enforcement unit. Each questionnaire will contain explicit instructions to the respondent on how to mark the answers, how to complete the information and how to return the questionnaire to the researcher. Participants will be given a deadline of seven days to return the questionnaire. A prepaid envelope will be provided with each questionnaire to simplify the return process.

Follow-up procedures will be more difficult in applying to the citizens that were mailed a questionnaire than on the law enforcement entities. Public service ads can be run in each geographical area that would inform the citizens to watch for the questionnaire in their mailboxes, but this could be more costly than what it is worth. Instead, what the researcher(s) can do is verify the respondent's veracity by making phone calls or emails to each citizen respondent.

This can be accomplished by requesting a contact number and email address from each respondent for verification purposes. Additionally, the researcher(s) can contact each law enforcement unit to follow-up on the dissemination and response rates of the officers. Administering the questionnaire will be accomplished solely by mail and delivery and totally dependant on the individuals receiving the questionnaire. Explicit instructions for the completion of the questionnaire will be included and the response rate could depend entirely on how clear those instructions are. It is important therefore to ensure that the instructions are written in a simple, but clear manner.

Administration of the questionnaire will continue as the responses are returned. Each questionnaire will be logged into a system that will track the responses by group and by geographical area. Logging each response in this manner will allow for a more comprehensive analysis of data.

The instrument

Since this study is seeking to determine (on the large part) individual perceptions, beliefs, ideals and values and affective evaluation is in order. Affective instruments are designed to measure an individual's characteristics in a quantitative manner. The instrument used for this study will be a questionnaire that will seek to assess feelings, attitudes, and values felt by the individual towards oneself, others, and specifically towards illegal immigrants and actions taken by others against those immigrants.

The questionnaire is designed to be non-projective in nature. This means that the questionnaire is a self-reporting measurement. Respondents offer answers to a series of questions about themselves. These questions can be preference oriented (ie; which do you prefer, hamburgers or hot dogs?) and will be descriptive in nature as well as correlational in aspect. The questionnaire will be descriptive because it is seeking to have the respondent describe certain values, thoughts, and perceptions and will be correlational because it is correlating those values in determining any relationship(s) between the values, actions taken, and end results of cross-deputization.

The most effective form of questionnaire use in this study is asserted to be an attitude scale type of instrument. There are a number of basic scales that measure attitudes, perceptions and beliefs. The scales include, semantic differential scales, rating scales, Likert scales, Thurstone scales and Guttman scales.

A semantic scale seeks to give a quantitative rating to topics that include attitudes towards different institutions or events. The respondent to a semantic scale survey is asked to rate a the subject being studied from low to high, or positive to negative, the respondent indicates the point on the continuum that represents his or her attitude towards the question. The semantic scale provides for scoring that are totaled up and represent either a positive, negative or neutral overall score.

Usually rating scales are used to determine a person's attitude towards others. The scale asks respondents to rate different individuals and the respondents attitudes towards those individuals. The questions contained on rating scales are normally oriented towards the behavior of others. An example of a rating scale is one that provides various descriptions of the behavior or performance of someone else and then asks the respondent to check the description that is most appropriate in that specific case.

The Likert Scale is the scale used in this study. A Likert Scale is normally used to determine whether respondents strongly agree (SA) agree (A) are undecided (U) disagree (D) or strongly disagree (SD). Each response is given a point value and the total point value when added together determines an individual's score. The score can be positive, neutral or negative depending on the types of questions asked in the questionnaire. If the questions are positive in nature (ie: illegal immigrants are entitled to the same treatment as U.S. citizens) and the respondent marks SA or A then the respondent can be said to have a positive attitude towards illegal immigrants. If the questions are negative in aspect (ie: illegal immigrants are not entitled to the same treatment as U.S. citizens) and the respondent marks either SA or A then the respondent can be said to have a negative attitude towards illegal immigrants. The questionnaire developed for this study is based on the Likert Scale because it is relatively simple to understand, complete and analyze.

The Guttman scale also seeks to have respondents agree or disagree with statements that are positive or negative in aspect. The difference between a Likert Scale and the Guttman scale is that the Guttman scale attempts to discover whether the attitude displayed by the respondent is unidimensional. A unidimensional attitude can best be explained by the fact that if a person marks SA or A on one positive question concerning illegal immigration then it is highly likely that the same respondent will answer the same manner on additional positive questions concerning illegal immigration. An example of this unidimensionality is that if the respondent agrees with statement three, he/she probably agrees with statements two and one.

The fifth attitude scale is the Thurstone scale. This scale is used to determine an individual's attitudes on a scale of 1 -- 11. The Thurstone scale asks respondents to select from a list of statements those that are most unlike their perspectives on the subject. Each value is assigned a number the respondent's answers are judged by judges as to their veracity. The problem with using a Thurstone scale is that the researcher(s) have to develop a wide variety of answers and view points to include on the questionnaire. This takes time and effort that might be better spent on developing a simple questionnaire that respondents can reply to easily and quickly. The study is seeking to garner as many responses as is viable, creating questionnaires that are quick, easy to complete and painless provides more opportunities for response than a Thurstone scale does.

An additional factor when considering a Likert scale for use in this study was the fact that others can easily understand and use the scale for analysis. It does not take the brain of a rocket scientist to discern whether the respondent is positive or negative in regards to the subject being evaluated. The Likert scale is very easily manipulated to ascertain whether the respondent maintains a positive or negative attitude. It is also a relatively simple matter to quantifying a Likert scale. A key component in accomplishing simplicity is to ensure that the questions are either negative or positive in tone. Writing the questions to be positive in nature is the most likely path to follow, so it will be necessary for the researchers to keep that goal in mind as the questionnaire is developed.