Friday, July 17, 2015

The True Cost of Immigration


Democrats, along with a number of equally feckless Republicans, are extolling the virtues of “comprehensive immigration reform.” Such jargon obscures their real agenda, which is the abandonment of the rule of law in favor of a political expediency that benefits the ruling class and its campaign contributors. A ruling class and campaign contributors who seek to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” into a nation where progressive power is permanent, and cheap labor is plentiful. Hence, while those virtues are put front and center before the public, the vices associated with illegal immigration are relegated to the back of the proverbial bus. Here’s a look at some of those vices.


We begin with crime. There are a number of statistical measurements. One is a 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) reportrevealing that the number SCAAP criminal alien incarcerations in state prison systems and local jails in FY2009 (the most recent data available) was about 296,000. As American Thinker’s Randall Hoven explains, “SCAAP is the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program and in this context means ‘illegal aliens’ ‚Äì a GAO term meaning ‘Noncitizens whom ICE verified were [or whom states and local jurisdictions believe to be] illegally in the United States at the time of incarceration.’”

Another is a report by the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) obtained by Breitbart News. It shows that while illegal aliens comprise 3.5 percent of the nation’s population, they comprised a whopping 36.7 percent of federal sentences following criminal convictions in FY 2014. The actual number of crimes for which these illegals received sentences was 27,505. The primary categories include drug trafficking, kidnapping/hostage taking, drug possession, money laundering and murder convictions.

This data comprise actual convictions of federal offenders subject to the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 (SRA). Omitted from the list are state and death penalty cases, as well as “cases initiated but for which no convictions were obtained, offenders convicted for whom no sentences were yet issued, and offenders sentenced but for whom no sentencing documents were submitted to the Commission.” And while the data do include immigration violations, which makes up the lion’s share of convictions, eliminating that category entirely would still have illegals comprising 13.6 percent of all sentenced offenders, a number that far exceeds the aforementioned 3.5 percent of the total U.S. population they represent.

More germane is data revealed by Judicial Watch (JW). They note that “as of April 26, 2014, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had released 165,900 convicted criminal aliens throughout the United States, including many convicted of such violent crimes as homicide, sexual assault, kidnapping, and aggravated assault.” These illegals, along with 706,950 non-criminal illegals, were ordered to leave the country, “but have not done so and remain free,” JW reveals. JW also explains the documents reveal the difficulty ICE has with local policies that interfere with federal enforcement of immigration law. Those would be “sanctuary city” policies and JW cites a case in Montgomery County, MD where officials prevented ICE from gaining access to an illegal charged with rape.


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