​President Trump’s singular obsession with the construction of his promised border wall has reached a crescendo in recent months: it triggered the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history and more recently it is the subject of his unprecedented move to use a declaration of National Emergency to override Congress and provide $8 billion for a partisan political project.
 
Setting aside questions about whether border barriers are ever able—or even intended—to produce “security” for the nations they aim to “protect” (Brown 2010, Jones 2012, Alatout 2009), Trump has worked diligently to convince the country that immigration makes the United States less secure. Of course, this assertion is apparently not based on any consultation with data or based in reality. Trump’s strategy of turning his “alternative facts” into common sense truths is eerily similar to that used by George W. Bush’s administration to convince the public that there was a relationship between the 9/11 attacks and the country of Iraq. Both strategies, of course, tap into longstanding and widely-held stereotypes about a racialized other.
 
Luckily, there are a great number of knowledgeable people who have dedicated their careers to asking and answering the question of what the relationship is—if there is one—between immigration and crime. In what follows, I will do my best to concisely present the main conclusions that this large body of scholarly research has provided us. I wrote this short piece to join the chorus of voices combatting dangerous disinformation about immigration. It is my hope that this information might be used by neighbors, friends, teachers, students, and family members to engage in empirically-grounded discussions about a topic that has, unfortunately, mostly been discussed without concern for the empirical reality.
​

The general consensus among scholars is that immigration is not associated with increased crime. Not with crime in general, not with violent crime, not with property crime. Period.
 
In fact, some scholars even argue immigration might actually be associated with a reduction in crime (Lee and Martinez , Light and Miller 2018, Reid et al. 2005). That’s right—while not totally conclusive, there is some evidence that cities and neighborhoods with more immigrants might actually tend to have less crime.
 
The take-away: While we often hear politicians say that allowing immigrants—undocumented or documented—into the country puts us at risk, this is simply not based in reality. It is a fabrication. A myth. False.
​

I’ll summarize a few of the interesting conclusions reached by scholars who study this topic. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list, but still representative of the general conclusions in the field more broadly.
​

1. More immigrants does not lead to higher crime rates. Scholars of the immigration-crime nexus have long noted that, over time, rising immigration rates coincide with falling crime rates. It turns out that this is also true on the individual city level. In this interactive report, you can track the trajectory of crime rates and immigration population size between 1980 and 2016 in 200 different cities in the U.S (Flagg 2018). In the great majority of cities (70%) the immigration rate increased and the crime rates either remained stable or fell.
2. Cities with larger immigrant communities do not have more crime. A number of studies have looked at whether there is a relationship between the proportional size of city’s immigrant population and crime rates. Trump would have you believe that cities with higher percentages of immigrants also have more crime. It turns out this is just not true. For example, one study (Reid et al. 2005) looked at 150 randomly selected metro areas and used Census data to find the percent of foreign born residents living in those cities. Then they found the crime rates for violent and non-violent (property) crime for those cities. If Trump were right, cities with larger percentages of immigrants would also have higher crime rates—but this is not what they found. Instead, they found that there was no positive correlation between the percent of foreign born residents and crime in U.S. metro areas. In fact, their findings suggest that cities with larger recent immigrant communities might have slightly less homicide and theft. It’s important to note that these findings are true even when controlling for factors like population density, total population size, the unemployment rate, poverty rate, and many other factors. Additionally, there seems to be evidence that this is true on the neighborhood level as well. For example, see this report by leading urban scholar Robert Sampson on the relationship between immigrants and crime in Chicago neighborhoods (Sampson 2008).
3. Undocumented immigration is not associated with more crime. You might have heard someone say something like: “I welcome legal immigrants, but people who come illegally are dangerous criminals.” Well, now you can feel confident correcting this misinformation. It turns out that researchers have  found that, at the state level, there is not a relationship between the proportion of undocumented immigrants and violent crime of any kind (Light and Miller 2018).
4. “Sanctuary city” policies do not make cities more dangerous. Another common assertion by members and supporters of Trump’s administration is that the policies of “sanctuary cities” make their residents less safe. According to Trump, sanctuary cities are breeding grounds for crime and attract criminal immigrants. It turns out that this is simply not true. One study (O’Brien, Collingwood, and El-Khatib 2019) tested this idea in two ways: First, they asked whether there was a change in crime rates after cities adopted sanctuary city policies. They looked at trends in violent crimes, property crimes, and rape in these cities and found that cities saw no significant change in crime rates after adopting sanctuary city policies. Second, they did a test to see whether, on average, cities with and without sanctuary policies, but “matched” in other aspects, had different rates of violent and property crimes. They found that there was no statistical difference in either direction—being a sanctuary city led to neither an increase nor a decrease in crime.

 ​
​Sarah // Madison, Wisconsin

Mexico City's "megacorte" (mega shutoff) of water begins today. I haven't seen or heard much news coverage in English, but it is truly a mind-boggling event. One of the major water provision systems in Mexico City, which supplies water to around 8 million residents in the metropolitan area, was shut off this morning and won't be turned back on until November 4, or possibly as late as November 8. The shutoff will allow for critical repairs. Imagine 8 million people not having running water to bathe, wash dishes, flush toilets, etc. for a week. For those who are fortunate to have never lived without household running water (like me, until living in Mexico City), you really don't realize how much of daily life relies on easy access until you no longer have it.

Mexico City has a major water problem and residents are used to having to endure days or weeks without water. Obviously, some neighborhoods deal with this more frequently than others and, not surprisingly, this unequal access to water maps onto socio-economic class in the city. Even in my upper-middle class neighborhood in Mexico City, Narvarte, we would usually experience 2-3 shutoffs per year that could last a few days or even over a week. This shutoff, however, is the largest in Mexico City's history and is being described by residents in apocalyptic terms.

Interestingly, this megacorte has coincided with the escalation of a heated debate over infrastructure in the city that culminated with a national vote over whether or not to continue with plans for a new airport in Mexico City. The vote, which took place over the weekend, decided against the airport and the President-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced his plans yesterday to cancel the project once he enters office in December. The planned airport would have been constructed on the mostly drained bed of Lake Texcoco on the eastern edge of the metropolitan area (not far from the current airport). Activists opposing the airport framed their fight as one in defense of water/nature and indigenous rights. The hash tag #YoPrefieroElLago ("I prefer the lake") was widely used to mobilize the vote against the airport.

Sarah // Madison, WI

I awoke, drowsy from the dramamine, and for a moment I forgot where I was. Looking out of the window of the bus, as it wound along a narrow, curving road, I saw nothing. Soft white nothingness. From time to time images appeared out of the dense white fog: a tree, a storefront. The bus slowed to a stop: we had arrived in Chapulhuacán, Hidalgo.

Chapulhuacán is a small town in the northern, mountainous region of Hidalgo. While it is not far from other, larger cities in the region, it feels very removed. The winding, poorly kept road that leads in and out of the town makes travel slow, arduous, and nauseating. We had traveled over 8 hours from Mexico City. 

Chapulhuacán is uniquely situated in the heart of a region that sends thousands of workers to the U.S. each year to work on temporary employment visas. That is why we were there--to  meet with worker leaders in the region, organize a few workshops, and promote Contratados.

On our last day in Chapulhuacán, the fog cleared. Deep, rich green replaced the gray-white. The landscape took my breath away. Coffee is a major source of income in the region. Most residents grow coffee for themselves, and many maintain plots large enough to sell as well.

Sarah  // Mexico City, Mexico

I admit it: I have been always been a little obsessed with public radio. My parents always had the local public radio station on in the car, but I first got hooked on This American Life my freshman year of high school. I also listened to other programs, including LatinoUSA with María Hinojosa. It became a dream of mine to be on a public radio show.

On January 9, 2014, my dream sort of came true: I was interviewed about Contratados for LatinoUSA. It feels a little anti-climatic, but it none the less happened.  The segment was part of a show called "The More You Know."

Sarah // Mexico City, Mexico

A week ago,  I was invited to speak on Entrecruzamientos, a program of Radio Educación, about access to information and labor recruitment. The interview was organized by Fundar and Gedisa, who coordinated and published Migrar en las Americas, as part of the book promotion campaign.

You can listen to the interview online here.

In the interview, I spoke about the vulnerability that labor recruitment imposes--not only on migrant workers, but also on families and entire communities. This is a perspective that I think deserves a much deeper examination.

I also spoke about solutions, and proposed that migrant workers have to create their own solutions and become their own advocates. Migrant workers cannot expect that governments, employers/recruiters or even advocates will effectively ensure the protection of their rights--they have to organize and become their own advocates. The more that I delve into the issue of labor recruitment, the more that I feel this is true. The interests of capital (which are opposed to those of migrant workers) will always be more important to the government than the interests of migrant workers. This means that any policy or program implemented by the government to supposedly improve protections for workers will never truly do so. No state-provided solution will ever undermine the interests of capital in any real way. This leaves workers to organize and create their own solutions--independent of the state. Contratados.org is a good start.

Also, here is a picture of me with Migrar en las Américas, where my co-authored chapter appears, for sale at the Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Sarah // Mexico City, Mexico

The hiring of Mexican workers for temporary employment in the United States is a transnational process with little transparency and accountability in which thousands of Mexicans have suffered from fraud and abuse. The program structure, controlled by employers, allows and encourages the use of agents and subcontractors and lacks the mechanisms to protect potential migrants. The nearly complete lack of public and accessible information encourages the violation of migrants’ rights. 

This article (1) presents an analysis of how the H-2A and H-2B programs work, (2) explains the legal and regulatory frameworks of the programs, (3) explores current problems in access to public information about recruitment, (4) explains the work that CDM has done to access public information through the Federal Institute of Access to Information and Data Protection (IFAI, the acronym in Spanish) in Mexico and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the United States, (5) argues that both governments must guarantee free and timely access to public information for migrants so they may protect themselves from fraud and abuse, and (6) proposes a series of changes to transparency laws so that they meet the needs of migrant workers.

Key words: Labor recruitment; temporary work; H-2A visa; H-2B visa; migrant workers; labor rights violations; right to access public information; Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); Instituto Federal de Acceso a la Información y Protección de Datos (IFAI)

The following is a summary of my remarks during the presentation of Migrar en las Américas on July 24, 2014, in the Museo de las Culturals Populares in Mexico City, Mexico.

I began my project intending to realize a micro-history of el Pedregal de Santo Domingo, a paracaidistaneighborhood in Mexico City, relying mostly on oral histories with residents, and supplemented by archival research. I wanted to understand how residents had constructed and organized their neighborhood from scratch, both by petitioning local governing authorities and by working autonomously in neighborhood associations. After involving myself in Santo Domingo and beginning my exploration of the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) and other archives, I realized that by limiting the project to study only the internal organization of a single community I would be missing much of what is interesting about the paracaidista phenomenon that engulfed the city during the 1960s and 1970s. I also realized that my knowledge of Santo Domingo’s history was far too limited to immediately begin oral histories with original residents.

The result is that my project has changed in two important ways. First, the scope of my project has broadened to include several questions about the paracaidismo of the city’s metropolitan area. How did citizens and urban governance (elected officials, organizations, programs) participate in the physical and social organization of Mexico City’s growth? How did economic and social policy (changes in government structure, creation of new laws and programs, etc.) reflect the vision held by urban governance for the city’s growth? How did these policies contribute to the demographic explosion and the organizational and social crisis of the city? By adding these questions, I will expand the results of my research to include conclusions about the nature of the urban process, namely the extent to which different actors control its direction, and with which mechanisms, tools, and tactics.

Second, archival research now makes up much more of my source material than I had originally planned. Oral histories are still indispensible for achieving the goals I originally outlined, but in order to understand the whole story of the organizational upheaval that the city underwent during this period, and in order to ask the right questions in my oral histories, other varieties of source material now constitute a much larger portion of my source base. Since my project aims to gauge the nature and influence of citizen participation, the histories and perspectives of individual residents are still an integral component of my research.

• Research progress: revision and detailed catalogue of nearly 200 documents, photographs, and newspaper articles; review of secondary literature; fieldwork in Santo Domingo and beginning stages of interview process; preliminary writing
• Archives consulted: Hemeroteca Nacional; various archives within the Archivo General de la Nación (AGN); el Museo Archivo de la Fotografía (MAF)
• Archives to consult: continuation of AGN; Archivo General Agrario; Archivo Histórico del Distrito Federal (AHDF); various mapotecas and fototecas housed within the AGN, AHDF, and the Biblioteca Nacional; Mexican census data (accessible through UNAM libraries)
• Government agencies to consult: Comisión para la Regularización de la Tenencia de la Tierra (CORETT); Delegación de Coyoacán (especially Unidad Departamental de Regularización Territorial)

// SEF // Mexico City, Mexico

I am currently reading Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century by Diane Davis, and was impressed by the data table she developed to show the change in population of greater Mexico City during the twentieth century.  Her table is especially interesting because it separates the census data into three geographical jurisdictions: Mexico City, the Federal District, and the Metropolitan area.  This allows for a more thorough look at the demographic patterns of the region, since demographic change was not uniform. I simply plugged her data into an excel sheet and created this visual representation.  (Click on the graph to more easily read the definitions for the three geographic jurisdictions.)

While the region’s population growth is generally impressive, the growth of the Metropolitan Area from 1960-1980 is staggering: during the 1960s and 1970s, the Metropolitan Area grew from 5.4 million to 14.4 million.  The four centraldelegaciones that comprise Mexico City proper (the original city center) actually saw a slight decrease in population during the period in question, which means all of the 9 million new residents settled in the greater Federal District and in the urban periphery.  Less than half (around 4 million) settled in the 12 great greater delegaciones of the Federal District, and around 5 million arrived in the surrounding municipalities, mostly in the state of Mexico.  Also note that the populations for the Federal District and the Metropolitan area are nearly identical until the 1960s, meaning that the population spilling beyond the borders of the Federal District before this period was negligible.

This means that the city’s urban footprint grew enormously during this period.  New residents, mostly coming from Mexico’s rural and economically depressed regions, were forced to the city’s periphery.  The explosive demographic growth meant that urban government was unable to supply basic services (utilities, housing, transport, etc.) to these new, often poor, populations located far from the city center.  With government unable to meet their basic needs, residents took matters into their own hands.  The 1960s and 1970s saw an explosion of colonias paracaidistas and other forms of irregular settlements, which were often hotbeds for political activity and engagement, usually around questions of urban services.

// SEF // Mexico City, Mexico

A friend of mine recently shared this with me and I thought it was a very fascinating way to reflect on the 100th anniversary of the start of the Mexican Revolution.  On November 20th, 1910, prominent Mexican anti-reelectionist politician Francisco I. Madero escaped from prison where he had been imprisoned by ruling dictator Porfirio Díaz and called for national revolution.  Fighting broke out first in the city of Puebla and then spread throughout the country.

The NYT had this take on those events and the possibility of revolution in the Republic of Mexico.  Published November 21, 1910.

Over the next 10 to 20 years (depending on how you define the end of the Revolution), Mexico freed itself from dictatorship, went through a staggering number of rulers, and found itself with a new constitution guaranteeing, among other things, all Mexicans new labor and land rights.  Francisco Villa led an army in the north and Emiliano Zapata organized the campesinado in the country’s central region.

The revolution was anything but organized–some say it is better described as a civil war–but it was also anything but “a petty political uprising.”  Perhaps the “more potent, hidden influence” that was “working behind the movement” was the discontent of the millions of Mexicans for whom the (so-called) progress of Díaz’s regime had never arrived.

¡Feliz centenario!

Ciudad Netzahualcóyotl (pronounced more-or-less “net-sa-wal-KOY-yote”), or sometimes shortened to simply Ciudad Neza, is a city adjacent to Mexico City.  Though someone unfamiliar with the political geography of the Valley of Mexico would probably not realize it, Ciudad Netzahualcóyotl is a separate political entity from Mexico City and located in a different state.  Mexico City is housed within the Distrito Federal while Ciudad Netzahualcóyotl is located in the neighboring state, the Estado de México.  Much of what encompasses the urban metropolitan area of Mexico City spills into the Estado de México, and this urban sprawl is what allows the population of the city to reach approximately 22 million.

Ciudad Neza, to which I have not traveled and most likely won’t ever visit during my time here, didn’t exist before the 1930s.  In fact, until around 1932, the land on which it now sits was submerged beneath the surface of Lake Texcoco.  Beginning in the 19th century, the Federal Government began a massive project to drain the lake which was finally completed in the 1930s.   Once drained, the land was declared property of the Federal Government and by 1933 construction of the Mexico City-Puebla highway was completed in the area.

The first informal settlements in Ciudad Neza began in the 1940s and in the following decades the population quickly ballooned.  By the 1950s, citizen groups had begun organizing and protesting the government for basic services like electricity, running water, road construction, and proper drainage systems to prevent flooding.  By 1960, the population of Ciudad Netzahualcóyotl had reached 90,000.  Citizen organizing to demand basic services, and later, regularization of land tenure continued into the 1980s.

Much of the Valley of Mexico, which includes Mexico City and Ciudad Netzahualcóyotl, suffers from frequent flooding.  This, of course, is due to the fact that until the massive drainage projects of the past several centuries, most of the valley was submerged under lakes.  The Mexican government is engaged in a constant battle to prevent the valley from returning to its natural state: filled with water.  In its early years, Ciudad Netzahualcóyotl experienced frequent flooding, and occasionally these floods were quite severe.  In 1967, the city experienced a period of especially heavy rains which brought devastating floods to the area.