More Immigrants, Fewer Drug-Related Deaths

Blaming immigrants for drugs and crime is a longtime strategy of politicians seeking votes. However, research shows immigrants are associated with fewer drug overdoses and homicides in an area, the opposite of what several office seekers have argued. Professors Ben Feldmeyer (Univ. of Cincinnati), Diana Sun (Florida Atlantic University), Casey T. Harris (Univ. of Arkansas) and Francis T. Cullen (Univ. of Cincinnati) examined county-level data from 2000 to 2015 in the United States to analyze the relationship between immigration and drug overdoses and homicides. The research is unique for studying these connections at the county level. “Our findings directly contradict the pervasive fears and political rhetoric suggesting that immigration has fueled drug problems across U.S. communities,” the authors of the study write. “We see no evidence linking immigration to rising overdose death rates, and instead we find that immigration has most often been associated with lower levels of overdose and homicide mortality. Thus, it appears that, if anything, immigration is more likely to have been part of the solution than the source of the overdose crisis of the early twenty-first century.” PROMOTED Feldmeyer, Sun, Harris and Cullen found, “County overdose rates were reduced by 4.5% for every one-percentage-point increase in the foreign-born population.” They discovered a one-percentage-point increase in the foreign-born population in a county was associated with a 3.0% decline in the death rates from natural opioids, heroin, and cocaine. “Taken together, these supplemental models show sizable protective effects of immigration and suggest that a 10-percentage-point increase in a county’s foreign-born population could contribute to as much as 40% to 50% lower overdose death rates overall and for nearly each of the substances examined here, net of controls.” The study found “increases in immigration are associated with significantly lower homicide and lower overdose death rates overall and across substance type.” The authors of the study explain the positive outcomes are connected, at least partly, to immigrants revitalizing an area. For more information, visit us at http://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/index.html.