Urban Legends

New immigrants may be the best thing that ever happened to American cities, but don't wait for the leading presidential candidates to tell you that.
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 4:28 PM ET Nov 28, 2007


The "Safest City" awards published a few days ago by Congressional Quarterly back up this kind of thinking. Among the top 10 with populations over 500,000, four are in Texas: Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin and the border town of El Paso, which is the second-safest big city in the country. Two are in California: San Jose and San Diego, which, again, is right across the line from Mexico. The safest city of all is Honolulu, with its very diverse population, while New York City ranks fourth. (New York City also looks as if it will have fewer murders this year than at any time since reliable statistics became available, in 1963.) "I would say, if you want to be safe, move to an immigrant city," Robert J. Sampson, chairman of the sociology department at Harvard University, told me on the phone this afternoon. (To continue: Urban Legends)

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