Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Repeat Offenders Who Aren’t Supposed to be Here

Illegal alien criminals have a high recidivism rate. And they aren’t being dorted. Not the first time. Not the sixth time they are arrested. Does the government even care about this problem?

Criminal aliens set free on the streets of America—instead of being deported after serving their time—are being rearrested as many as six more times by U.S. authorities, according to a government audit released yesterday.
But the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General said it did not know how many of 262,105 illegals in the audit, who had been charged with a crime and then released, had been rearrested.
Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that the volume of available files “was too great to search manually and quantify the results” and that investigators instead selected a sample of 100 illegal aliens arrested in 2004 and reviewed their criminal histories for evidence of rearrests.
Mr. Fine noted that although the limited audit did not find any instances of “outright failure” to cooperate with Homeland Security in the removal of criminal aliens from the United States, a review of the 100 criminal histories “produced results that, if indicative of the full population of criminal aliens identified, suggest that the rate at which released criminal aliens are re-arrested is extremely high.”

The government doesn’t seriously look for illegal workers even though they are easy to find. When they do it makes the news, as in the recent Swift Foods case, but then they get attacked by all usual suspects. Meanwhile, thousands of potential criminals are crossing the border illegally every day. Thousands. (Actually, they are all criminals if they are coming here illegally but that’s another matter).

The government doesn’t seem to be serious about dealing with a serious problem. Which means the real criminals are in the halls of government. They are sworn by law to protect this country and they’re doing nothing of the kind. 

Friday, December 22, 2006

Cliche of the Week

U.S. Hispanic groups and activists on Thursday called for a moratorium on workplace raids to round up illegal immigrants, saying they were reminiscent of Nazi crackdowns on Jews in the 1930s.

They accused the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement of “racial profiling,” or selective enforcement against Hispanics, for arresting 1,300 workers on immigration violations in December 12 raids at meatpacking plants in six states.

“We are demanding an end to these immigration raids, where they are targeting brown faces. That is major, major racial profiling, and that cannot be tolerated,” said Rosa Rosales, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, at a news conference.

Reuters

Last time I checked, ICE hasn’t putting illegals in cattle cars and sending them to be gassed. These raids were about identity theft and other lawbreaking. Working in the US illegally is a crime. So, is League of United Latin American Citizens a criminal organization since they promote criminal behavior? Sure sounds that way.

At the very least they are committing the crime of using lame arguments.

Unlike the gestapo, ICE has to work under stringent legal restrictions.

ICE is an investigative agency, it can’t go fishing for undocumented immigrants. ICE will not suddenly show up and raid a place. No need to worry about someone shouting “¡Migra!” - like the old days.

Plus, ICE agents are hamstrung with enforcing a law that is very difficult for businesses to break.

The law says an employer must “knowingly” hire someone illegally. That investigation against the pallet company, for example, involved ripped-up tax documents, an undercover officer and several taped conversations.

ICE can’t do much about the typical employment transaction, which involves a reasonably good phony document. As you know, bosses usually are not interested in asking a lot of questions when they’re hiring. Even if your Social Security number is all zeros. Even if it’s the same as six other employees.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

What Was That Again?

Remember that old cliche that keeps getting trotted out about illegal aliens? How they take jobs Americans don’t want to do?

Lies.

The line of applicants hoping to fill jobs vacated by undocumented workers taken away by immigration agents at the Swift & Co. meat-processing plant earlier this week was out the door Thursday.

Among them was Derrick Stegall, who carefully filled out paperwork he hoped would get him an interview and eventually land him a job as a slaughterer. Two of his friends had been taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and he felt compelled to fill their rubber boots.

There are a lot of Americans who would like many of the jobs illegals take. This has been one of the most pernicious lies of our times, and Republicans like Bush have used it over and over again. I would like to see more of these ICE raids just to see what happened next.