8. Summary and Conclusion

Past findings on the comparative ratings of the police by minority immigrants and non-immigrant and non-Hispanic Whites are quite mixed. The majority of immigrants regardless of their ethnic and racial background express favorable attitudes toward the police present in their community. The interplay of race/ethnicity and immigration oftentimes seems to mitigate, rather than amplify, newcomers’ potential negative assessments of the police. Factors shaping immigrants’ perceptions of the police in general are not so drastically different from those of the rest of American population. A comprehensive test of the conceptual framework of immigrant perceptions of the police proposed in this book is strongly encouraged. More studies should be conducted to test the impact of contextual characteristics, including neighborhood-, city-, and even nation-level factors, on immigrants’ perceptions of their host country police. Researchers should continue to compare and contrast immigrants with non-immigrants, particularly with respect to greater diversity in types of immigrant groups studied. Scholars ought to watch closely and investigate in a timely way the impact of the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies and orders on immigrant groups’ perceptions of the police.