Victim visa roulette

Undocumented violent crime victims in the United States are eligible for a special visa if law enforcement verifies their cooperation. A Reuters investigation has found wide disparities among jurisdictions in how likely law enforcement is to certify a victim.

Click on columns to sort overall rankings. Click on rows to compare specific cities to each other.

City
U visa certifications
(2009-2014)
Total Population
(2010)
Percentage Foreign Born
(2008-2012)
Violent Crime Incidents
(2012)
Violent Crime Rate
(per 100,000)
Methodology: In response to public records requests from Reuters, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services disclosed the ZIP code for each law enforcement agency listed on over 86,000 U visa verifications received by the federal government between 2009 and the end of May 2014. For the above table, Reuters took the most populous U.S. cities from the 2010 census, identified all of the ZIP codes within those cities, then matched those ZIP codes to the USCIS data.Click here for the full list of U visa verifications disclosed by USCIS.
The government also said it had received an additional 6,706 verifications with the location data blank during the same timeframe.

Sources: USCIS, FBI, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Postal Service