Recently, the Cato Institute published a research study that showed crime rates in Texas by illegal as well as legal immigrants are lower, in fact much lower than native-born Americans. This was an astonishing report to us, not because we don't believe it, but because one hardly hears such reports in the news. The popular political narrative of some conservatives, which we often hear in the news, is the opposite - that immigrants increase crime in America. Also, we should point out that the news of the Cato research wasn't exactly headline news! Rather, it was a tiny note in the Wall Street Journal.  

To understand the correlation between immigration and crime, and its history, we spoke with Professor Jennifer Chacón of UC Berkeley Law. This is a link to her academic homepage: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/jennifer-m-chacon/