Scapegoating Immigrants: Arizona's Real Crisis is Rooted in State Residents' Soaring Drug Abuse

A Public Policy Study from the Centre on Juvenile and Criminal Justice

by Mike Males and Daniel Macallair

From 1990 to 2010, Arizona gained more than 1.3
million new Hispanic residents, approximately 1
million of whom located in the Phoenix metropolitan
area.1 With 2 million legal and an estimated 300,000
undocumented Hispanic residents in the state today,
approximately 31 percent of Arizona’s population and
perhaps as much as 35 percent of the population
within its borders is of Hispanic origin.2

This report examines crime and drug abuse trends in
Arizona over the last two decades of massive legal
and nonlegal Hispanic in-migration. Arizona’s recent
anti-immigrant law3 is based on the theory that crime
rates, especially related to drug distribution, and other
social ills are driven by increases in legal and
nonlegal immigration (see sidebar). Arizona’s
governor even stated that, “the majority of the illegal
trespassers that are coming into the state of Arizona
are under the direction and control of organized drug
cartels, and they are bringing drugs in.”4

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