Does Halting Refugee Resettlement Reduce Crime? Evidence from the US Refugee Ban

Daniel Masterson and Vasil Yasenov
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Daniel Masterson: Immigration Policy Lab

No w2x7p, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Many countries have reduced refugee admissions in recent years, in part due to fears that refugees and asylum seekers increase crime rates and pose a national security risk. Existing research presents ambiguous expectations about the consequences of refugee resettlement on crime. We leverage a natural experiment in the US, where an Executive Order by the president in January 2017 halted refugee resettlement. This policy change was sudden and significant – it resulted in the lowest number of refugees resettled on US soil since 1977 and a 66% drop in resettlement from 2016 to 2017. In this letter we find that there is no discernible effect on county-level property or violent crime rates.

Date: 2018-12-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:w2x7p

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/w2x7p

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