Creating a Problem Statement & Background for Perception Paper

Butcher, K. F., & Piehl, A. M. (1998). Cross‐city evidence on the relationship between immigration and crime. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 17(3), 457-493.

- Authors Butcher and Piehl investigate the connection between immigration into a metropolitan area in the context of the crime rate in that area. Set in the 80's, the authors utilized data from the Uniform Crime Reports and the Current Population Surveys. They found out that in the cross section of these variables, citis with high immigrant population also had high crime rates. They found out also that when the variable of demographic characteristics are used as lens, recent immigration seem to not have signioficant impact on crime rates. Looking at the timeline and statistics to see crime rate over time, they also concluded that flow of immigratnts into the city appear to have no effect with or without utilising control elements for city-level characteristocs. To further provide context to their study, they took on a secondary analysis using individual data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and concluded based on this that youth born abroad are, at least statistically less prone to be criminally active than their American-born counterparts. The purpose of the authors is to investigate if there is a relationship between immigration and crime because of public concerns that immigration of costs of both and how they likely overlap.

Chacon, J. (2010)."Tensions and Trade-Offs: Protecting Trafficking Victims in the Era of Immigration Enforcement," in University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 158, 2010, UC Irvine School of Law Research Paper No. 2010-19. Retrieved from https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/26-chacon158upalrev16092010pdf

- Author J. Chacon through this work sought to uncover and expose the tensions and trade-offs between immigration policy choices vis-à-vis anti-trafficking efforts of the US . With her paper focused on human trafficking, she hypothesized that if cross-border movement is subject to high regulization and cirminalization at an international level, human trafficking will not be elminnated. Her study is dvided into 2 parts. Part 1 discusses and explores the ways in which antitrafficking advocacy and polices can move to intensify the discourse on restrictive immigration policies. She also discusses the many elements that impact the formation of stereotyping migrant criminality, including the media, efforts of law enforcement and official statements released by pertinent government agencies. Part 2 of the study looked at the growth of human trafficking and the criminalization enforced by, as well a sassociated to it so that it has become the justification for greater law enforcement presence, greater number of prosecutors in border districts and fast-tracked immigration-related prosecutions. The author's focus of study is the US-Mexico borderland. She also explored the development of of anti-trafficking laws and statutes in conjunction with the desire of state governments to assert greater legal authority over immigration enforcement. This study is a descriptive study.

Chacon, J. (2012). "Overcriminalizing Immigration," in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Volume 102, Issue 3: Symposium on Overcriminalization, Article 5. Retrieved from http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7434&context=jclc

- In this study, Chacon carries on her investigation into Immigration issues. The paper is a critical study whereby the author contends that state and local governments are heavily criminalizing immigration whereby they are (Chacon, 2010), "criminaliz(ing) things that properly should not be crimes." She contends that immigration statutes and current immigration law is part of this, reinforced by the following trends - challenging Federal exclusivity in immigration regulation, sub-federal criminalization of migration and the increase of Federal Enforcement activities as a response to criticism that the government is not doing 'enough' for immigration law enforcement so as to police the borders. She charts that this is evidenced by the large increase of Federal Cases involving immigration offenses as showcase by the 46% of Federal Arrests involving immigration offenses in comparison to the 5.4% of Federal Arrest involving the same in 1993, some 13 years prior. This for Chacon is further evidenced by that fact that 2/3 of individuals prosecuted in 2009 for individual crimes were petty misdemeanants from 5 Southwest Border Districts. This for Chacon has had little impact in stemming migration flows but has come at a huge cost. Migration enforcement can be attained outside of the criminal sphere and she contends that concentrating efforts on immigration enforcement marginalizes funding for other justice investments as well as automatizes reliance on racial profiling leading to systemic violation f Federal Rules on Criminal Procedure.

Coronado, R. & Orrenius, P. (2007)."Crime on the U.S.-Mexico Border: The Effect of Undocumented Immigration and Border Enforcement, " MigracionesInternacionales, V. 4, n. 1, Juni, Mexico.Retrieved from http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S166589062007000100002

- In this study, Coronado and Orrenius ask how certain changed in undocumented immigration in the US as well as border enforcement (with a focus on US-Mexico border discourse) played a role in generating these divergent trends: a decrease in property-related crimes and rapid 2x decrease of violent crime-rates in areas far from the borders. They conclude that migrant apprehensions are correlated to violent crime and that increased border enforcement has not had the deterrent effect authorities were expecting on said crimes. What they observed however is this - increased border enforcement in a sector leads to increase of violent crime in a neighboring sector. They also found out that property crime is not correlated to migrant apprehensions and while they some found evidence that support the idea that border enforcement has lowered property crime rates, this is in contention as it is sensitive to model's specification. They also found that improved border economy, especially rapid job growth played a significant role in lowering rates for property crimes. Their study is a quantitative study utilizing crime, police, demographic and economic statistical data of 2o US counties bordering Mexico from the 90's to the early 2000's.

Haugen, D. & Musser, S. (2011). Illegal Immigration. Greenhaven Press (CA).

- This book is a collection of articles and studies on the subject of illegal immigration. Haugen and Musser catalouge and edit a selection of articles, studies and works that cover this broad discourse and provides a dialectic that pits studies so as to debate if illegal immigration threatens the US economy, if deporting all illegal immgrants to the US is possible and if sectors of anti-immigrations protestoers are driven by racist bias. This book is part of the Publisher's 'Opposing Views' selection where the book presents opposing views on a topic, in this case, illegal immigration. The book has 4 main chapters with a 28-item bibliography, subject index and a resource list of organizations that can be contacted for further investigationof the issue.

Krauss, R. & Pardo, J. (2006)."Speaker Perception and Social Behavior: Bridging Social Psychology and Speech Science, " from P. A. M. van Lange (Ed), Bridging Social Psychology: The Benefits of Transdisciplinary
Approaches (pp. 273-278). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/1086119/Speaker_perception_and_social_behavior_Bridging_social_psychology_and_speech_science

- In this study, Krauss and Pardo seek to distinguish between speech perception and speaker perception. The purpose of their study is to showcase how language plays a critical role in social life so that it has become an important part of psychological research. They accept that social psychologists have focused on semantic-pragmatic levels of linguistic analysis and therefore have paid less attention the organized sound system underlying speech. They define speech perception as processes underlying comprehension of linguistic speech content and speaker perception as including effects of variability in speech not linguistically significant. Speaker perception to them is an important area of study in social psychology. Their study therefore described 2 broad search areas illustrating the insights a consideration of the phonological level of speech can contribute to the understanding of social life. This study has relevance in this study as it contextualizes how speech perception (how people talk, communicate) leads to the creation of meanings and ideas about identity and concepts like criminality.

Meissner, D., Kerwin, D., Chishti, M. & Bergeron, C. (2013).Immigration Enforcement in the United States - The Rise of a Formidable Machinery (Report in Brief). Migration Policy Institute. Retrieved fromhttp://www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/pillars-reportinbrief.pdf

- This is an extensive report on a study undertaken by the Migration Policy Institute of the US. Consisting of 9 chapters, it is still considered a brief report on the subject. According to Meissner, Kerwin, Chishti and Bergeron (2013), "The report traces the evolution of the immigration enforcement system, particularly in the post-9/11 era, in terms of budgets, personnel, enforcement actions, and technology - analyzing how individual programs and policies have resulted in a complex, interconnected, cross-agency system." They contend that with US government spending more on Federal Immigration Enforcement than on any other principal Federal criminal law enforcement agencies combined, what resulted is the creation of a formidable system. They report that since 1986, almost $187 billion has been allocated to this and over the year, enforcement practice has been the de factor government response, making it America's singular policy on the issue. Deportations have reached record highs of late with 2011 seeing the number of returned (deported) exceeded the number of removals as deportations are carried out more than orders issued by immigration judges.

Palafox, J. (2000). "Opening Up Borderland Studies: A Review of U.S.-Mexico Border Militarization Discourse, " in Social Justice, 27:56-68. Retrieved from http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/palafox.html

- Palafox' article is a review of the US-Mexico Border militarization Discourse. He reviewed the different debates, issues and concepts in the discourse and contends that the US-Mexico border has been 'militarized', providing an overview, albeit in brief of the main theoretical and cultural critiques of border militarization. This theoretical background include a discussion of Dunn's low intensity conflict theory where he concludes that the US, by applying this aims to achieve political, social, economic and psychological objectives. He proposes that while largely applicable in 3rd world settings, it is not effective in the US borders in terms of achieving its aims. But because employment on border enforcement is propping up local economy, what results is a social system dependent on law enforcement and criminalization.

Ousey, G. C., & Kubrin, C. E. (2009). Exploring the connection between immigration and violent crime rates in US cities, 1980-2000.

- In this work, Ousey and Kubrin (2009) contend that while it is popularly believed that immigration leads to higher crime rates, "historical and contemporary research finds that at the individual level, immigrants are not more inclined to commit crime than the native-born." There are gaps in knowledge of macro-level relationship between immigration and crime. For example, the authors propose that, "despite the fact that immigration is a macro-level social process that unfolds over time, longitudinal macro-level research on the immigration-crime nexus is virtually nonexistent. Moreover, while several theoretical perspectives posit sound reasons why over-time changes in immigration could result in higher or lower crime rates, we currently know little about the veracity of these arguments." To address this, the study onvestigates and explores the longitudinal relationship between immigration and violent crime across U.S. cities giving that initial emperical assessment of theoretical perspectives that can provide explanations of such relationships.

Burns, C., Klofas, J. M., & Delaney, D. C. (2009). Immigration and Crime Rates. Center for Public Safety Initiatives.

- In this paper, principal Author, Burns is provided guidance by Kolas and Delaney. According to Burns (2009), the study, "focuses on whether or not immigrants breed crime in neighborhoods that they inhabit." To do this he investigates the conducive and inhibitive aspects of immigration in relation to crime. Additionally, he applied the Social Disorganization theory to study the affect of immigration on crime. This is a descriptive macro study of the topic.