Vance defends unsubstantiated claims about immigration, crime

WASHINGTON – Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, the Republican vice presidential nominee, on Friday defended his past unsubstantiated claims about immigration in which he suggested that early waves of Italian, Irish and German immigration led to higher crime and interethnic conflict, by citing the movie “Gangs of New York.”

At a campaign event before the Milwaukee Police Association, Vance was asked about the comments – which have resurfaced in recent days – from a 2021 interview with far-right podcaster Jack Murphy, and whether he would have prescribed the kind of mass deportations then that he and former President Donald Trump have made central to their platform now.

Vance mostly skirted the question on removals, but he stood by his comments on crime and ethnic and interethnic conflict, pointing to the Martin Scorsese film that depicts gang violence between Irish migrants and nativist Protestant Americans.

“Well, first of all, I also said there were a lot of benefits to that wave of immigration, but has anybody ever seen the movie ‘Gangs of New York’? That’s what I’m talking about,” he said. “We know that when you have these massive ethnic enclaves forming in our country, it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates.”

Later, he added: “What happens when you have massive amounts of illegal immigration? It actually starts to create ethnic conflict. It creates higher crime rates.”

Asked to provide evidence for the claims, a campaign spokesperson pointed to a report from an anti-immigration think tank that argues crimes committed by immigrants are underestimated because many crimes go unreported and to a rise in violence in Minnesota that authorities have attributed to a rivalry between St. Paul and Minneapolis East African gangs.

Since the nation’s founding, nativist politicians and anti-immigrant activists have sought to conflate immigration with crime. But historians and criminologists say there are no empirical studies to support claims like those made by Vance.

The studies that do exist have repeatedly concluded that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States. A 2023 study by researchers at Stanford, Princeton and other major institutions found that, since 1880, immigrants have not been more likely to be imprisoned than people born in the United States. And as immigration into the United States has increased, crime has decreased in recent years.

Tyler Anbinder, a historian who wrote the book “City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York,” and served as a historical adviser for the movie “Gangs of New York,” said immigrants in New York during the film’s time period and since have not committed crime disproportionate to their population numbers and have almost always been arrested at lower rates than natives.

“Immigrants are so happy to be in America,” Anbinder said, adding that one of the main reasons immigrants commit less crimes than natives is “because they don’t want to be deported.”

Alex R. Piquero, a criminology professor at University of Miami and a former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said Vance was wrong to raise concerns about “ethnic enclaves.” Immigrants – regardless of the time period or ethnic background – tend to cluster in neighborhoods where they have relatives, know others who can speak their native language and can feel secure in their new environment.

“What’s very peculiar about these statements is that those ethnic enclaves do not breed crime,” he said of Vance’s stance, adding that “they actually serve as a protective buffer from crime.”

In his remarks, Vance also argued for a return to early 20th-century thinking when he said the United States was “welcoming country to immigrants” but Americans realized that the nation “could only take so many people,” arguing that deportations would benefit the country.

“I think that will promote assimilation and a common American culture that’s in the best interest of everybody,” he said.

But in arguing that more immigrants lead to higher crime and ethnic conflict, historians said, Vance was echoing arguments that American nativists have used since at least the 19th century to classify and marginalize some demographic groups as racially inferior, genetically predisposed to crime and unable to be assimilated.

Those negative stereotypes and misconceptions – once centered on certain Europeans but more recently focused on Mexicans and Latino migrants – have fueled prejudice and led to more extreme treatment of immigrants by government officials, police, the courts and the press.

In “Gangs of New York,” the most ruthless killer is the nativist who disdains immigrants, Anbinder said. But Vance appears to associate the Irish immigrants in the movie with the violence, he added.

“Throughout American history, those who fear or hate immigrants have always wanted to speak of them and scapegoat them as bringing crime to America,” Anbinder said. “What Vance is doing is not much different now.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.