Krystlelynn Caraballo

ABSTRACT The criminalization of immigration (i.e. crimmigration) has complicated who constitutes an “offender” for foreign nationals lacking authorization to be in the United States (U.S.). This study proposes a theoretical expansion of the Victim-Offender-Overlap framework to account for the effect of crimmigration on the schism between “status” and “criminal” offending using 2011 survey data from 333 unauthorized individuals in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

Abstract Research on foreign nationals’ crime and victimization outcomes heavily relies on binary “immigration status” measures that fail to account for the legal parameters of U.S. citizenship and immigration laws. This study demonstrates the potential misclassification of foreign-born U.S. citizens, the sanitization of foreign nationals’ heterogeneity, and the masking effect the use of binary measures has on outcomes compared to legally informed proxy statuses.