🚀 go-pugleaf

The Bandit wrote:
> I found this tonight going through old files, most likely been posted
> before, but it is so good I'll post it again.
>
>
> The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave
> Heather Mac Donald
>
>
> Some of the most violent criminals at large today are illegal aliens.
> Yet in cities where the crime these aliens commit is highest, the
> police cannot use the most obvious tool to apprehend them: their
> immigration status. In Los Angeles, for example, dozens of members of
> a ruthless Salvadoran prison gang have sneaked back into town after
> having been deported for such crimes as murder, assault with a deadly
> weapon, and drug trafficking. Police officers know who they are and
> know that their mere presence in the country is a felony. Yet should
a
> cop arrest an illegal gangbanger for felonious reentry, it is he who
> will be treated as a criminal, for violating the LAPD's rule against
> enforcing immigration law.
>
> The LAPD's ban on immigration enforcement mirrors bans in
> immigrant-saturated cities around the country, from New York and
> Chicago to San Diego, Austin, and Houston. These "sanctuary policies"
> generally prohibit city employees, including the cops, from reporting
> immigration violations to federal authorities.
>
> Such laws testify to the sheer political power of immigrant lobbies,
a
> power so irresistible that police officials shrink from even
> mentioning the illegal-alien crime wave. "We can't even talk about
> it," says a frustrated LAPD captain. "People are afraid of a backlash
> from Hispanics." Another LAPD commander in a predominantly Hispanic,
> gang-infested district sighs: "I would get a firestorm of criticism
if
> I talked about [enforcing the immigration law against illegals]."
> Neither captain would speak for attribution.
>
> But however pernicious in themselves, sanctuary rules are a symptom
of
> a much broader disease: the nation's near-total loss of control over
> immigration policy. Fifty years ago, immigration policy might have
> driven immigration numbers, but today the numbers drive policy. The
> nonstop increase of immigration is reshaping the language and the law
> to dissolve any distinction between legal and illegal aliens and,
> ultimately, the very idea of national borders.
>
> It is a measure of how topsy-turvy the immigration environment has
> become that to ask police officials about the illegal-alien crime
> problem feels like a gross faux pas, not done in polite company. And
a
> police official asked to violate this powerful taboo will give a
> strangled response_or, as in the case of a New York deputy
> commissioner, break off communication altogether. Meanwhile, millions
> of illegal aliens work, shop, travel, and commit crimes in plain
view,
> utterly secure in their de facto immunity from the immigration law.
>
> I asked the Miami Police Department's spokesman, Detective Delrish
> Moss, about his employer's policy on lawbreaking illegals. In
> September, the force arrested a Honduran visa violator for seven
> vicious rapes. The previous year, Miami cops had had the suspect in
> custody for lewd and lascivious molestation, without checking his
> immigration status. Had they done so, they would have discovered his
> visa overstay, a deportable offense, and so could have forestalled
the
> rapes. "We have shied away from unnecessary involvement dealing with
> immigration issues," explains Moss, choosing his words carefully,
> "because of our large immigrant population."
>
> Police commanders may not want to discuss, much less respond to, the
> illegal-alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is
> startling. Some examples:
>
> ù In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for
homicide
> (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds
> of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.
>
> ù A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in
> 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in
southern
> California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually
> much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia,
the
> dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution
> schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an
> assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown
> dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived
> youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.
>
> ù The leadership of the Columbia Lil' Cycos gang, which uses murder
> and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.'s MacArthur
> Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant
U.S.
> attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an
> illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time
for
> felonious reentry following deportation.
>
> Good luck finding any reference to such facts in official crime
> analysis. The LAPD and the L.A. city attorney recently requested an
> injunction against drug trafficking in Hollywood, targeting the 18th
> Street Gang and the "non-gang members" who sell drugs in Hollywood
for
> the gang. Those non-gang members are virtually all illegal Mexicans,
> smuggled into the country by a ring organized by 18th Street bigs.
The
> Mexicans pay off their transportation debts to the gang by selling
> drugs; many soon realize how lucrative that line of work is and stay
> in the business.
>
> Cops and prosecutors universally know the immigration status of these
> non-gang "Hollywood dealers," as the city attorney calls them, but
the
> gang injunction is assiduously silent on the matter. And if a
> Hollywood officer were to arrest an illegal dealer (known on the
> street as a "border brother") for his immigration status, or even
> notify the Immigration and Naturalization Service (since early 2003,
> absorbed into the new Department of Homeland Security), he would face
> severe discipline for violating Special Order 40, the city's
sanctuary
> policy.
>
> The ordinarily tough-as-nails former LAPD chief Daryl Gates enacted
> Special Order 40 in 1979_showing that even the most unapologetic
> law-and-order cop is no match for immigration advocates. The order
> prohibits officers from "initiating police action where the objective
> is to discover the alien status of a person"_in other words, the
> police may not even ask someone they have arrested about his
> immigration status until after they have filed criminal charges, nor
> may they arrest someone for immigration violations. They may not
> notify immigration authorities about an illegal alien picked up for
> minor violations. Only if they have already booked an illegal alien
> for a felony or for multiple misdemeanors may they inquire into his
> status or report him. The bottom line: a cordon sanitaire between
> local law enforcement and immigration authorities that creates a safe
> haven for illegal criminals.
>
> L.A.'s sanctuary law and all others like it contradict a key 1990s
> policing discovery: the Great Chain of Being in criminal behavior.
> Pick up a law-violator for a "minor" crime, and you might well
prevent
> a major crime: enforcing graffiti and turnstile-jumping laws nabs you
> murderers and robbers. Enforcing known immigration violations, such
as
> reentry following deportation, against known felons, would be even
> more productive. LAPD officers recognize illegal deported gang
members
> all the time_flashing gang signs at court hearings for rival
> gangbangers, hanging out on the corner, or casing a target. These
> illegal returnees are, simply by being in the country after
> deportation, committing a felony (in contrast to garden-variety
> illegals on their first trip to the U.S., say, who are only
committing
> a misdemeanor). "But if I see a deportee from the Mara Salvatrucha
> [Salvadoran prison] gang crossing the street, I know I can't touch
> him," laments a Los Angeles gang officer. Only if the deported felon
> has given the officer some other reason to stop him, such as an
> observed narcotics sale, can the cop accost him_but not for the
> immigration felony.
>
> Though such a policy puts the community at risk, the department's top
> brass brush off such concerns. No big deal if you see deported
> gangbangers back on the streets, they say. Just put them under
> surveillance for "real" crimes and arrest them for those. But
> surveillance is very manpower-intensive. Where there is an immediate
> ground for getting a violent felon off the street and for questioning
> him further, it is absurd to demand that the woefully understaffed
> LAPD ignore it.
>
> The stated reasons for sanctuary policies are that they encourage
> illegal-alien crime victims and witnesses to cooperate with cops
> without fear of deportation, and that they encourage illegals to take
> advantage of city services like health care and education (to whose
> maintenance few illegals have contributed a single tax dollar, of
> course). There has never been any empirical verification that
> sanctuary laws actually accomplish these goals_and no one has ever
> suggested not enforcing drug laws, say, for fear of intimidating
> drug-using crime victims. But in any case, this official rationale
> could be honored by limiting police use of immigration laws to some
> subset of immigration violators: deported felons, say, or repeat
> criminal offenders whose immigration status police already know.
>
> The real reason cities prohibit their cops and other employees from
> immigration reporting and enforcement is, like nearly everything else
> in immigration policy, the numbers. The immigrant population has
grown
> so large that public officials are terrified of alienating it, even
at
> the expense of ignoring the law and tolerating violence. In 1996, a
> breathtaking Los Angeles Times expos, on the 18th Street Gang, which
> included descriptions of innocent bystanders being murdered by
> laughing cholos (gang members), revealed the rate of illegal-alien
> membership in the gang. In response to the public outcry, the Los
> Angeles City Council ordered the police to reexamine Special Order
40.
> You would have thought it had suggested reconsidering Roe v. Wade. A
> police commander warned the council: "This is going to open a
> significant, heated debate." City Councilwoman Laura Chick put on a
> brave front: "We mustn't be afraid," she declared firmly.
>
> But of course immigrant pandering trumped public safety. Law-abiding
> residents of gang-infested neighborhoods may live in terror of the
> tattooed gangbangers dealing drugs, spraying graffiti, and shooting
up
> rivals outside their homes, but such anxiety can never equal a
> politician's fear of offending Hispanics. At the start of the
> reexamination process, LAPD deputy chief John White had argued that
> allowing the department to work closely with the INS would give cops
> another tool for getting gang members off the streets. Trying to
build
> a homicide case, say, against an illegal gang member is often futile,
> he explained, since witnesses fear deadly retaliation if they
> cooperate with the police. Enforcing an immigration violation would
> allow the cops to lock up the murderer right now, without putting a
> witness's life at risk.
>
> But six months later, Deputy Chief White had changed his tune: "Any
> broadening of the policy gets us into the immigration business," he
> asserted. "It's a federal law-enforcement issue, not a local
> law-enforcement issue." Interim police chief Bayan Lewis told the
L.A.
> Police Commission: "It is not the time. It is not the day to look at
> Special Order 40."
>
> Nor will it ever be, as long as immigration numbers continue to grow.
> After their brief moment of truth in 1996, Los Angeles politicians
> have only grown more adamant in defense of Special Order 40. After
> learning that cops in the scandal-plagued Rampart Division had
> cooperated with the INS to try to uproot murderous gang members from
> the community, local politicians threw a fit, criticizing district
> commanders for even allowing INS agents into their station houses. In
> turn, the LAPD strictly disciplined the offending officers. By now,
> big-city police chiefs are unfortunately just as determined to defend
> sanctuary policies as the politicians who appoint them; not so the
> rank and file, however, who see daily the benefit that an immigration
> tool would bring.
>
> Immigration politics have similarly harmed New York. Former mayor
> Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend
> the city's sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that
> cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the
> INS. Oh yeah? said Giuliani; just watch me. The INS, he claimed, with
> what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to "terrorize
> people." Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On
> September 5, 2001, his handpicked charter-revision committee ruled
> that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration
> information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and
> government. Six days later, several visa-overstayers participated in
> the most devastating attack on the city and the country in history.
>
> New York conveniently forgot the 1996 federal ban on sanctuary laws
> until a gang of five Mexicans_four of them illegal_abducted and
> brutally raped a 42-year-old mother of two near some railroad tracks
> in Queens. The NYPD had already arrested three of the illegal aliens
> numerous times for such crimes as assault, attempted robbery,
criminal
> trespass, illegal gun possession, and drug offenses. The department
> had never notified the INS.
>
> Citizen outrage forced Mayor Michael Bloomberg to revisit the city's
> sanctuary decree yet again. In May 2003, Bloomberg tweaked the policy
> minimally to allow city staffers to inquire into immigration status
> only if it is relevant to the awarding of a government benefit.
Though
> Bloomberg's new rule said nothing about reporting immigration
> violations to federal officials, advocates immediately claimed that
it
> did allow such reporting, and the ethnic lobbies went ballistic.
"What
> we're seeing is the erosion of people's rights," thundered Angelo
> Falcon of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. After
> three months of intense agitation by immigrant groups, Bloomberg
> replaced this innocuous "don't ask" policy with a "don't tell" rule
> even broader than Gotham's original sanctuary policy. The new rule
> prohibits city employees from giving other government officials
> information not just about immigration status but about tax payments,
> sexual orientation, welfare status, and other matters.
>
> But even were immigrant-saturated cities to discard their sanctuary
> policies and start enforcing immigration violations where public
> safety demands it, the resource-starved immigration authorities
> couldn't handle the overwhelming additional workload.
>
> The chronic shortage of manpower to oversee, and detention space to
> house, aliens as they await their deportation hearings (or, following
> an order of removal from a federal judge, their actual deportation)
> has forced immigration officials to practice a constant triage. Long
> ago, the feds stopped trying to find and deport aliens who had
> "merely" entered the country illegally through stealth or fraudulent
> documents. Currently, the only types of illegal aliens who run any
> risk of catching federal attention are those who have been convicted
> of an "aggravated felony" (a particularly egregious crime) or who
have
> been deported following conviction for an aggravated felony and who
> have reentered (an offense punishable with 20 years in jail).
>
> That triage has been going on for a long time, as former INS
> investigator Mike Cutler, who worked with the NYPD catching Brooklyn
> drug dealers in the 1970s, explains. "If you arrested someone you
> wanted to detain, you'd go to your boss and start a bidding war,"
> Cutler recalls. "You'd say: 'My guy ran three blocks, threw a couple
> of punches, and had six pieces of ID.' The boss would turn to another
> agent: 'Next! Whaddid your guy do?' 'He ran 18 blocks, pushed over an
> old lady, and had a gun.' " But such one-upmanship was usually
> fruitless. "Without the jail space," explains Cutler, "it was like
the
> Fish and Wildlife Service; you'd tag their ear and let them go."
>
> But even when immigration officials actually arrest someone, and even
> if a judge issues a final deportation order (usually after years of
> litigation and appeals), they rarely have the manpower to put the
> alien on a bus or plane and take him across the border. Second
> alternative: detain him pending removal. Again, inadequate space and
> staff. In the early 1990s, for example, 15 INS officers were in
charge
> of the deportation of approximately 85,000 aliens (not all of them
> criminals) in New York City. The agency's actual response to final
> orders of removal was what is known as a "run letter"_a notice asking
> the deportable alien kindly to show up in a month or two to be
> deported, when the agency might be able to process him. Results: in
> 2001, 87 percent of deportable aliens who received run letters
> disappeared, a number that was even higher_94 percent_if they were
> from terror-sponsoring countries.
>
> To other law-enforcement agencies, the feds' triage often looks like
> complete indifference to immigration violations. Testifying to
> Congress about the Queens rape by illegal Mexicans, New York's
> criminal justice coordinator defended the city's failure to notify
the
> INS after the rapists' previous arrests on the ground that the agency
> wouldn't have responded anyway. "We have time and time again been
> unable to reach INS on the phone," John Feinblatt said last February.
> "When we reach them on the phone, they require that we write a
letter.
> When we write a letter, they require that it be by a superior."
>
> Criminal aliens also interpret the triage as indifference. John
> Mullaly a former NYPD homicide detective, estimates that 70 percent
of
> the drug dealers and other criminals in Manhattan's Washington
Heights
> were illegal. Were Mullaly to threaten an illegal-alien thug in
> custody that his next stop would be El Salvador unless he cooperated,
> the criminal would just laugh, knowing that the INS would never show
> up. The message could not be clearer: this is a culture that can't
> enforce its most basic law of entry. If policing's broken-windows
> theory is correct, the failure to enforce one set of rules breeds
> overall contempt for the law.
>
> The sheer number of criminal aliens overwhelmed an innovative program
> that would allow immigration officials to complete deportation
> hearings while a criminal was still in state or federal prison, so
> that upon his release he could be immediately ejected without taking
> up precious INS detention space. But the process, begun in 1988,
> immediately bogged down due to the numbers_in 2000, for example,
> nearly 30 percent of federal prisoners were foreign-born. The agency
> couldn't find enough pro bono attorneys to represent such an army of
> criminal aliens (who have extensive due-process rights in contesting
> deportation) and so would have to request delay after delay. Or
enough
> immigration judges would not be available. In 1997, the INS simply
had
> no record of a whopping 36 percent of foreign-born inmates who had
> been released from federal and four state prisons without any review
> of their deportability. They included 1,198 aggravated felons, 80 of
> whom were soon re-arrested for new crimes.
>
> Resource starvation is not the only reason for federal inaction. The
> INS was a creature of immigration politics, and INS district
directors
> came under great pressure from local politicians to divert scarce
> resources into distribution of such "benefits" as permanent
residency,
> citizenship, and work permits, and away from criminal or other
> investigations. In the late 1980s, for example, the INS refused to
> join an FBI task force against Haitian drug trafficking in Miami,
> fearing criticism for "Haitian-bashing." In 1997, after Hispanic
> activists protested a much-publicized raid that netted nearly two
> dozen illegals, the Border Patrol said that it would no longer join
> Simi Valley, California, probation officers on home searches of
> illegal-alien-dominated gangs.
>
> The disastrous Citizenship USA project of 1996 was a luminous case of
> politics driving the INS to sacrifice enforcement to "benefits."
When,
> in the early 1990s, the prospect of welfare reform drove immigrants
to
> apply for citizenship in record numbers to preserve their welfare
> eligibility, the Clinton administration, seeing a political bonanza
in
> hundreds of thousands of new welfare-dependent citizens, ordered the
> naturalization process radically expedited. Thanks to relentless
> administration pressure, processing errors in 1996 were 99 percent in
> New York and 90 percent in Los Angeles, and tens of thousands of
> aliens with criminal records, including for murder and armed robbery,
> were naturalized.
>
> Another powerful political force, the immigration bar association,
has
> won from Congress an elaborate set of due-process rights for criminal
> aliens that can keep them in the country indefinitely. Federal
> probation officers in Brooklyn are supervising two illegals_a
> Jordanian and an Egyptian with Saudi citizenship_who look "ready to
> blow up the Statue of Liberty," according to a probation official,
but
> the officers can't get rid of them. The Jordanian had been caught
> fencing stolen Social Security and tax-refund checks; now he sells
> phone cards, which he uses himself to make untraceable calls. The
> Saudi's offense: using a fraudulent Social Security number to get
> employment_a puzzlingly unnecessary scam, since he receives large
sums
> from the Middle East, including from millionaire relatives. But
> intelligence links him to terrorism, so presumably he worked in order
> not to draw attention to himself. Currently, he changes his cell
phone
> every month. Ordinarily such a minor offense would not be prosecuted,
> but the government, fearing that he had terrorist intentions, used
> whatever it had to put him in prison.
>
> Now, probation officers desperately want to see the duo out of the
> country, but the two ex-cons have hired lawyers, who are relentlessly
> fighting their deportation. "Due process allows you to stay for years
> without an adjudication," says a probation officer in frustration. "A
> regular immigration attorney can keep you in the country for three
> years, a high-priced one for ten." In the meantime, Brooklyn
probation
> officials are watching the bridges.
>
> Even where immigration officials successfully nab and deport criminal
> aliens, the reality, says a former federal gang prosecutor, is that
> "they all come back. They can't make it in Mexico." The tens of
> thousands of illegal farmworkers and dishwashers who overpower U.S.
> border controls every year carry in their wake thousands of brutal
> assailants and terrorists who use the same smuggling industry and who
> benefit from the same irresistible odds: there are so many more of
> them than the Border Patrol.
>
> For, of course, the government's inability to keep out criminal
aliens
> is part and parcel of its inability to patrol the border, period. For
> decades, the INS had as much effect on the migration of millions of
> illegals as a can tied to the tail of a tiger. And the immigrants
> themselves, despite the press clich, of hapless aliens living
> fearfully in the shadows, seemed to regard immigration authorities
> with all the concern of an elephant for a flea.
>
> Certainly fear of immigration officers is not in evidence among the
> hundreds of illegal day laborers who hang out on Roosevelt Avenue in
> Queens, New York, in front of money wire services, travel agencies,
> immigration-attorney offices, and phone arcades, all catering to the
> local Hispanic population (as well as to drug dealers and
terrorists).
> "There is no chance of getting caught," cheerfully explains Rafael,
an
> Ecuadoran. Like the dozen Ecuadorans and Mexicans on his particular
> corner, Rafael is hoping that an SUV seeking carpenters for $100 a
day
> will show up soon. "We don't worry, because we're not doing anything
> wrong. I know it's illegal; I need the papers, but here, nobody asks
> you for papers."
>
> Even the newly fortified Mexican border, the one spot where the
> government really tries to prevent illegal immigration, looms as only
> a minor inconvenience to the day laborers. The odds, they realize,
are
> overwhelmingly in their favor. Miguel, a reserved young carpenter,
> crossed the border at Tijuana three years ago with 15 others. Border
> Patrol spotted them, but with six officers to 16 illegals, only five
> got caught. In illegal border crossings, you get what you pay for,
> Miguel says. If you try to shave on the fee, the coyotes will abandon
> you at the first problem. Miguel's wife was flying into New York from
> Los Angeles that very day; it had cost him $2,200 to get her across
> the border. "Because I pay, I don't worry," he says complacently.
>
> The only way to dampen illegal immigration and its attendant train of
> criminals and terrorists_short of an economic revolution in the
> sending countries or an impregnably militarized border_is to remove
> the jobs magnet. As long as migrants know they can easily get work,
> they will find ways to evade border controls. But enforcing laws
> against illegal labor is among government's lowest priorities. In
> 2001, only 124 agents nationwide were trying to find and prosecute
the
> hundreds of thousands of employers and millions of illegal aliens who
> violate the employment laws, the Associated Press reports.
>
> Even were immigration officials to devote adequate resources to
> worksite investigations, not much would change, because their legal
> weapons are so weak. That's no accident: though it is a crime to hire
> illegal aliens, a coalition of libertarians, business lobbies, and
> left-wing advocates has consistently blocked the fraud-proof form of
> work authorization necessary to enforce that ban. Libertarians have
> erupted in hysteria at such proposals as a toll-free number to the
> Social Security Administration for employers to confirm Social
> Security numbers. Hispanics warn just as stridently that helping
> employers verify work eligibility would result in discrimination
> against Hispanics_implicitly conceding that vast numbers of Hispanics
> work illegally.
>
> The result: hiring practices in illegal-immigrant-saturated
industries
> are a charade. Millions of illegal workers pretend to present valid
> documents, and thousands of employers pretend to believe them. The
law
> doesn't require the employer to verify that a worker is actually
> qualified to work, and as long as the proffered documents are not
> patently phony_scrawled with red crayon on a matchbook, say_the
> employer will nearly always be exempt from liability merely by having
> eyeballed them. To find an employer guilty of violating the ban on
> hiring illegal aliens, immigration authorities must prove that he
knew
> he was getting fake papers_an almost insurmountable burden.
Meanwhile,
> the market for counterfeit documents has exploded: in one month alone
> in 1998, immigration authorities seized nearly 2 million of them in
> Los Angeles, destined for immigrant workers, welfare seekers,
> criminals, and terrorists.
>
> For illegal workers and employers, there is no downside to the
> employment charade. If immigration officials ever do try to conduct
an
> industry-wide investigation_which will at least net the illegal
> employees, if not the employers_local congressmen will almost
> certainly head it off. An INS inquiry into the Vidalia-onion industry
> in Georgia was not only aborted by Georgia's congressional
delegation;
> it actually resulted in a local amnesty for the growers' illegal
> workforce. The downside to complying with the spirit of the
employment
> law, on the other hand, is considerable. Ethnic advocacy groups are
> ready to picket employers who dismiss illegal workers, and employers
> understandably fear being undercut by less scrupulous competitors.
>
> Of the incalculable changes in American politics, demographics, and
> culture that the continuing surge of migrants is causing, one of the
> most profound is the breakdown of the distinction between legal and
> illegal entry. Everywhere, illegal aliens receive free public
> education and free medical care at taxpayer expense; 13 states offer
> them driver's licenses. States everywhere have been pushed to grant
> illegal aliens college scholarships and reduced in-state tuition. One
> hundred banks, over 800 law-enforcement agencies, and dozens of
cities
> accept an identification card created by Mexico to credentialize
> illegal Mexican aliens in the U.S. The Bush administration has given
> its blessing to this matricula consular card, over the strong protest
> of the FBI, which warns that the gaping security loopholes that the
> card creates make it a boon to money launderers, immigrant smugglers,
> and terrorists. Border authorities have already caught an Iranian man
> sneaking across the border this year, Mexican matricula card in hand.
>
> Hispanic advocates have helped blur the distinction between a legal
> and an illegal resident by asserting that differentiating the two is
> an act of irrational bigotry. Arrests of illegal aliens inside the
> border now inevitably spark protests, often led by the Mexican
> government, that feature signs calling for "no m s racismo."
Immigrant
> advocates use the language of "human rights" to appeal to an
authority
> higher than such trivia as citizenship laws. They attack the term
> "amnesty" for implicitly acknowledging the validity of borders.
> Indeed, grouses Illinois congressman Luis Gutierrez, "There's an
> implication that somehow you did something wrong and you need to be
> forgiven."
>
> Illegal aliens and their advocates speak loudly about what they think
> the U.S. owes them, not vice versa. "I believe they have a right . .
.
> to work, to drive their kids to school," said California
assemblywoman
> Sarah Reyes. An immigration agent says that people he stops "get in
> your face about their rights, because our failure to enforce the law
> emboldens them." Taking this idea to its extreme, Joaqu¡n Avila, a
> UCLA Chicano studies professor and law lecturer, argues that to deny
> non-citizens the vote, especially in the many California cities where
> they constitute the majority, is a form of apartheid.
>
> Yet no poll has ever shown that Americans want more open borders.
> Quite the reverse. By a huge majority_at least 60 percent_they want
to
> rein in immigration, and they endorse an observation that Senator
Alan
> Simpson made 20 years ago: Americans "are fed up with efforts to make
> them feel that [they] do not have that fundamental right of any
> people_to decide who will join them and help form the future country
> in which they and their posterity will live." But if the elites' and
> the advocates' idea of giving voting rights to non-citizen majorities
> catches on_and don't be surprised if it does_Americans could be faced
> with the ultimate absurdity of people outside the social compact
> making rules for those inside it.
>
> However the nation ultimately decides to rationalize its chaotic and
> incoherent immigration system, surely all can agree that, at a
> minimum, authorities should expel illegal-alien criminals swiftly.
> Even on the grounds of protecting non-criminal illegal immigrants, we
> should start by junking sanctuary policies. By stripping cops of what
> may be their only immediate tool to remove felons from the community,
> these policies leave law-abiding immigrants prey to crime.
>
> But the non-enforcement of immigration laws in general has an even
> more destructive effect. In many immigrant communities, assimilation
> into gangs seems to be outstripping assimilation into civic culture.
> Toddlers are learning to flash gang signals and hate the police,
> reports the Los Angeles Times. In New York City, "every high school
> has its Mexican gang," and most 12- to 14-year-olds have already
> joined, claims Ernesto Vega, an illegal 18-year-old Mexican. Such
> pathologies only worsen when the first lesson that immigrants learn
> about U.S. law is that Americans don't bother to enforce it.
> "Institutionalizing illegal immigration creates a mindset in people
> that anything goes in the U.S.," observes Patrick Ortega, the news
and
> public-affairs director of Radio Nueva Vida in southern California.
> "It creates a new subculture, with a sequela of social ills." It is
> broken windows writ large.
>
> For the sake of immigrants and native-born Americans alike, it's time
> to decide what our immigration policy is_and enforce it.

Learn more and join the fight to protect our borders.

Paul

Good sites:

http://www.fairus.org/   F.A.I.R
http://www.numbersusa.com/  Numbers USA

http://www.projectusa.org/