US study linking immigration and crime sparks controversy

Spain's Cadena SER radio station has reignited controversy by broadcasting a US study concluding that the growth of the irregular migrant population is not associated with an increase in violent crime. The headline chosen by the station leaves no room for nuance: "A large study debunks the claim that illegal immigration increases crime." The research, published in the Journal of Urban Affairs, analyzed the evolution of crime between 2010 and 2018 in 11,500 neighborhoods across more than 100 US cities. Its author, Charis, a researcher at the University of California, Irvine, has become the center of a controversy that goes beyond the data.

A US study with an expiration date for Spain

The first blow to Cadena SER's thesis comes from the methodology. The data cover a period ending in 2018 and a country with a sociological and legal reality very different from Spain's. Critics also point out that neighborhood-level analysis may fail to capture the displacement of crime: if offenses do not increase where immigrants are concentrated, they may simply have moved to the next neighborhood over. Extrapolating this to Spain, amid crises like the one in Ceuta, is at the very least hasty.

On the other side, some argue that this study is just one more in a line of research that dismantles the cliché linking immigration and crime. Inmate population data, however, continue to fuel public suspicion. The debate is not scientific: it is political and emotional.

The perception of insecurity, the other uncomfortable figure

While academic studies find no correlation, the street seems to measure something else. One figure mentioned in the discussion: since 2000, alarm systems connected to monitoring stations have increased by 900%. It cannot be claimed this is due to immigration, but the perception of insecurity is indeed growing much faster than actual crime.

Cadena SER defends its headline as an exercise in rigor. Its critics see it as an attempt to manipulate the narrative with an outdated study from another country. In between, readers are left with the usual question: is the available evidence valid for Spain at the moment it is used? For now, the noise outweighs the data.