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A Meditation On Moncrieffe: On Marijuana, Misdemeanants, And Migration, Victor C. Romero Jan 2014

A Meditation On Moncrieffe: On Marijuana, Misdemeanants, And Migration, Victor C. Romero

Journal Articles

This essay is a brief meditation on the immigration schizophrenia in our law and legal culture through the lens of the Supreme Court’s latest statement on immigration and crime, Moncrieffe v. Holder. While hailed as a “common sense” decision, Moncrieffe is a rather narrow ruling that does little to change the law regarding aggravated felonies or the ways in which class and citizenship play into the enforcement of minor drug crimes and their deportation consequences. Despite broad agreement on the Court, the Moncrieffe opinion still leaves the discretion to deport minor state drug offenders in the hands of the federal …


Legal Status And The Criminal Activity Of Immigrants, Giovanni Mastrobuoni, Paolo Pinotti Jan 2014

Legal Status And The Criminal Activity Of Immigrants, Giovanni Mastrobuoni, Paolo Pinotti

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

We exploit exogenous variation in legal status following the January 2007 European Union enlargement to estimate its effect on immigrant crime. We difference out unobserved time-varying factors by 1) comparing recidivism rates of immigrants from the “new” and “candidate” member countries and 2) using arrest data on foreign detainees released upon a mass clemency that occurred in Italy in August 2006. The timing of the two events allows us to set up a difference-in-differences strategy. Legal status leads to a 50 percent reduction in recidivism and explains one-half to two-thirds of the observed differences in crime rates between legal and …