While some left-of-center media outlets claim that no relationship exists between immigration and crime in specific areas of Europe (or that immigration even reduces crime), the story is certainly more complex when you look at broad areas of the region and focus on violent crime. If we consider the countries of northwestern continental Europe shown in the map below (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden), and then consider changes in the international migrant stock (number of people born in a country other than that in which they live, including refugees -- available at five-year intervals starting in 1960), real per capita GDP, the unemployment rate, and the population normalized rate of violent crime, a possible story emerges. It is clear that within this group of European nations, higher net rates of immigration (i.e., greater changes in the international migrant stock as a percentage of total population)...(Read Full Post)