Immigrants harbor good, hardworking, honest people, and shiftless, lazy criminals bent on theft and destruction. In this, they are no different from the rest of the world, a mix of good and bad. Illegal immigrants, for their willingness to violate laws, their ability to evade lawful authority, and to blend into a sea of people, all with their own code of silence, make it somewhat easier for the bad people among them, and like all incentives, what you incent increases in frequency.
So it is unsurprising that NRO's resident police expert, Jack Dunphy, has a dim view of illegal aliens. As a Los Angeles police officer, he sees the worst that the immigrant community has.
What he doesn't seem to get is that immigration officials are engaged in triage when they refuse to prosecute federal charges of illegal reentry. They have only so many slots to shoehorn in criminal deportations and the sea of immigrants that are caught is too vast to actually enforce the law.
In an overloaded system, triage is a pretty name for an ugly process. In medicine it normally means picking who can wait for treatment and who will be seen immediately. If the system is overwhelmed, it means letting the complicated mortally wounded die so other mortally wounded can live.
In an immigration context, the courts are so jam packed with illegals fighting deportation that only the immediately dangerous will actually get added to that system in order to avoid constitutional violations on the grounds of not providing a speedy trial. At the same time, people are being shoveled into the deportation process for lost paperwork, visa overstays, and a hundred other reasons that aren't the threat of criminal aliens but can't just be ignored.
But if you reduce the number of people who are trying to cross illegally by letting the honest ones in the front door, there will be fewer criminal aliens and no sea of hard working, sympathetic, personally honorable illegals to hide among. If you're an illegal, you're up to no good. You don't have a job. You can't get a normal visa. Who is going to tolerate that? The deportation system won't be so overburdened because deportation of temporary workers is a quick process. Either the person is working or they aren't. Proof of employment presented and next case. No proof presented and it's a straight ride to the nearest relevant border point.
You end up with more available slots, fewer people willing to hide illegal aliens, and a system that is no longer overwhelmed and doesn't have to let the minor criminal aliens go.
And what's wrong with that?
Posted by TMLutas at January 22, 2004 10:26 PM