For more than a century, immigration policies and laws have been shaped and formed by the fear and stereotypes suggesting that foreign immigrants are seen as high-risk offenders. As a result, billions of dollars are poured into border protection a year, while other social programs are left to work on a paper-thin budget. However, contrary to this popular assumption, empirical studies have proven that foreign born immigrants actually offend at a lower rate than their native-born counterparts. Furthermore, according to recent peer reviewed work, immigration has been shown to have an inverse relationship with criminal trends in areas where both are present. Understanding this, this paper proposes a policy that would cut unnecessary spending for border protection agencies’ budgets and reallocate this money to social programs that are most in need for budget growth, namely education. In this paper, the possible positive and negative side effects, quantitative and qualitative efficacy assessment, as well as obstacles and necessary steps to guarantee proper implementation will be discussed and evaluated.

Zachary would like to thank their faculty sponsor, Dr. Kenya Brumfield-Young, for their support of this project.