Do undocumented migrants underreport crimes to the police in order to avoid being deported? And do criminals exploit such vulnerability? We address these questions using victimization surveys and administrative data around the 1986 U.S. immigration amnesty. The amnesty allows us to solve two major identification issues that have plagued this literature: migrants’ legal status is endogenous and unobserved. The results show that the reporting rate of undocumented immigrants is 17 percent, which limits the immigrants’ ability to protect some of their fundamental human rights. However, right after the 1986 amnesty, which disproportionately legalized individuals of Hispanic origin, crime victims of Hispanic origin show enormous improvements in reporting behavior. The implied increase in the reporting rate by amnesty applicants is close to 20 percentage points.

中文翻译：

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无辜者的沉默：无证移民少报犯罪及其受害

无证移民是否会向警方少报犯罪行为以避免被驱逐出境？犯罪分子会利用这种漏洞吗？我们使用围绕 1986 年美国移民大赦的受害调查和行政数据来解决这些问题。大赦使我们能够解决困扰该文献的两个主要身份识别问题：移民的法律地位是内生的和未被观察到的。结果显示，无证移民的举报率为17%，这限制了移民保护其部分基本人权的能力。然而，就在 1986 年大赦之后，西班牙裔的个人不成比例地合法化，西班牙裔的犯罪受害者在报告行为方面表现出了巨大的进步。