Migrants moving through a transit camp in Gevgelija, Macedonia, after entering the country by crossing the border with Greece.
Credit: Ognen Teofilovski/Reuters

Fears that increased immigration could be linked to a spike in terrorism have spurred presidential hopeful Donald Trump to propose banning Muslims from entering the country, deporting all undocumented immigrants, and even erecting a wall across the 2,000-mile U.S.–Mexico border. But a new study suggests such drastic measures would do little to curb extremist violence.

Researchers at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom found that more migration could actually minimize rather than intensify the occurrence of terrorist attacks. The authors of Does Immigration Induce Terrorism?, published this month in The University of Chicago’s The Journal of Politics, used data from the World Bank to examine migration patterns between 145 countries over the span of 1970–2000. The authors then measured terrorist attacks in each […]