But then I heard about Jose Sosa.
Jose Sosa is a 16 year old immigrant from Mexico who has been living in our community here in Nashville. Several months ago Sosa was picked up in an INS raid and deported back to Mexico. He stayed about two weeks, and then came back across the border, taking up residence with a brother here in South Nashville. Sosa probably would have gone through our community without notice, if it weren’t for the fact that he has now been charged with the brutal murder of a mother and daughter in the house next door to his brother. The facts aren’t completely in, but the early stories suggest that he may have been trying to sexually assault the daughter when the mother came in. In the fight that followed Sosa came up with a knife and stabbed the two women repeatedly. Of course, he still is innocent until proven guilty, but the bloody fingerprints on the door match his and it looks from the outside like this kid is a murderer.Now one bad apple doesn’t mean that the whole barrel is rotten. And frankly I hate to hear that it is an undocumented alien charged in the crime for that simply feeds the fear and concerns of those in my community who are hostile to our new neighbors from Mexico.
But I wonder . . . Could it be possible that the current approach to immigration which leads to illegal activity is feeding into a group of people who think that law is optional? Might Sosa, a 16 year old kid, represent a group of young persons who start life engaged in illegal activities and thereby are more likely to continue in other activities? Does the breaking of one set of laws with impunity lead to a disregard of the entire body of law?
Jay isn't convinced it is so, but there is enough about the possibility that he finds it compelling enough to explore. However, it has been explored at some length. City Journal reported in its Winter 2004 edition,
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. ...
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
The number of illegal aliens sentenced in federal courts increased by 167 percent , compared with 13 percent for citizens. The number of legal aliens declined by 18 percent over this period.
The share of defendants in federal courts who were illegal aliens rose from 4 percent to 11 percent while the share who were legal aliens declined from 12 percent to 9 percent.
The number of illegal aliens sentenced increased for 89 of the 94 federal district courts, for all major offense categories, and for all major country of citizenship groups.
I'd say, based on these cites and many others I'm not listing here, that the question is answered.
Sure. Most violent criminals are young men and a disproportionate number of illegal migrants are young men, too. I think it also should be considered that, if you're a career criminal, the U. S. is a more lucrative place to ply your trade than Mexico.
It's unclear to me that any immigration reform short of opening our borders completely will cure this particular problem.
OK I had to be first with the spooky Friday the 13th reference. That done with,
I guess you missed the "illegal" in the illegal alien. What makes anyone think these will ever be law abiding residents when their first and nearly all subsequent acts in the US are crimes? More crimes are comitted on top of their illegal entry. Document fraud, tax evasion, false representation, and in some instances identity theft. These are not to be taken lightly. Of course this says nothing about the criminal element involved in smuggling them, as well as the large number of criminals and gang members who choose to come over as well.
LA County jails hold roughly 23% illegal aliens at a cost of millions each year. I suggest your read Testimony of Heather Mac Donald, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research,testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims for a greater understanding of the criminal element at play here.
Yes there are those who come to work, but for many, their work is crime.
Gabriel Chapman, under current U. S. law entering the country in contravention of U. S. immigration law is not a crime—it's a violation of the civil code. That's why there was all the to-do about the House immigration bill: it would make illegal entry into the U. S. a violation of the criminal code.
However, lots of acts subsequent to the illegal entry of the country e.g. driving without a license or (in my state) insurance, failure to pay taxes, etc. are, indeed, misdemeanors. So, yes, the illegal migrants are frequently scofflaws.
The real issue is violent crime and I'm not sure that the willingness to drive without insurance equates to a willingness to murder or rape.
Dave Shuler....this one's for you. What "rock" have you been living under? I don't know which state your in, but I invite you to come live in my old hometown of Norcross, Georgia. It was once a beautiful,rural place. Now, twenty years later, no Americans can live there and Latino gangs rule. Once you live there or somewhere else comparable, then you'll have some credibility with the illegal immigration debate.
>>Does the breaking of one set of laws with impunity lead to a disregard of the entire body of law?
One can only hope.
There are a bunch of comments illustrating the well, illustrative stats in the Tyler Cowen blog:
here
"I am going to, using the US-2000 census, compare the 250 million Natives, the 9.2 million Mexicans foreign born, and the 22 million other immigrants.
I have no idea myself WHY Aliens are over-represented as serious felons. But the data suggests that they are and they represent a serious problem.
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/stp-159/native.pdf
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/stp-159/STP-159-Mexico.pdf
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/stp-159/foreignborn.pdf
(the 22 are obviously all foreign born minus Mexican foreign born)
Let us start with labor force participation of those hardworking Mexicans.
Natives 60.2%
Other Forign born 57.1%
Mexican 54.3%
Per capita Income?
Natives 22.000 $
Other Forign born 25.000$
Mexican 13.000 $
Perhaps the best proxy for succes in society and welfare dependecen, the rate of pover r
Natives 8.3% (remember this figure next time you speak to a liberal)
Other Forign born 11.4%
Mexican 24.4%
Share speaking english at home, as good a measure of assimilation as anything
Natives 91% (remember 8% of natives are already hispanics)
Other Forign born 22%
Mexican 5.6%
Education? Surely only a nazifacistracist uncultured biggot from the South would suggest Mexican immigrants are not well educated.
Share of population with no high school diploma
Natives 17%
Other Forign born 25%
Mexican 70%(!)
Natives 25%
Other Forign born 32%
Mexican 4%(!!)"
--- From commenter "Tyler".
IIRC Illegals are vastly over-represented compared to their percentage of the population as felons; suggesting that there is a serious problem. Perhaps it is a matter of culture, or language, or poverty, or what have you.
But there is indeed a problem and the National Criminal Justice Stats have this info buried in them (for PC reasons the Justice Dept does not come out and say it). The Bureau of Justice stats here has data sheets you can import into Excel for those interested in teasing out the data. Don't have time myself sorry.
Brenda, you might want to read my comments a little more closely. I'm just hewing closely to the actual topic of Rev. Sensing's post: illegal migrants and crime, particularly violent crime. There's nothing in either of my comments that suggests that I deny that the crime statistics are higher among illegal migrants than among the general population or, for that matter, that I support illegal migrants in any way.
I merely offered two commonsense explanations for the observed phenomenon. The first explanation for a higher proportion of violent criminality among illegal Mexican migrants is the demography of the migration—predominantly young men. The second is the convenience of a rich neighbor for Mexican career criminals. I also offered a “Modest Proposal” solution to the problem to the extent that it's caused by the first explanation I offered: ultimately, there's no way for us to change the demographic mix of migrants other than open borders (which I happen to think is a terrrible idea).
I dislike ad hominem arguments of the sort that you employed in your comment and sincerely wish that all commenters would stop using them. They're irrelevant. They don't move the argument forward in any way other than to motivate people with a lower tolerance for them to stop reading WoC or commenting on it.
One way for all of us to maintain WoC as a good place for discourse is to refrain from hurling insults that invite retaliation in kind.
Gabriel: I think Dave might have misspoke when he said it wasn't criminal to enter the country, but that law is only a misdemeanor law that doesn't apply to the 40% of illegal aliens that entered the country legally and which is difficult to enforce without catching the actual entry (or unless the alien waives his/her right against self-incrimination). Which is why I believe there are currently proposals to criminalize illegal status, not merely the entry.
But I am skeptical that the willingness to commit a misdemeanor or any civil crime (a crime that is not against property or person) correlates with a propensity to violent crime.
I do suspect that illegal aliens have to rely upon an underground economy for a lot of things that encourages crime. I wonder how many of the crimes committed by illegal aliens are against illegal aliens or the immigrant communities that house them?
Thanks for setting me straight on that, Gabriel Chapman. I appreciate the citation. And PD Shaw has also made a good contribution: overstaying one's visa and entering illegally are different matters. And PD Shaw and I are on the same page on the distinction on crime against property and persons (which, as I understand it, is the subject of the original post).
The observation on the underground economy adds another commonsense explanation of some of the crime.
"What makes anyone think these will ever be law abiding residents when their first and nearly all subsequent acts in the US are crimes?"
Gabe, at first I was going to write how shrill you sound with this.
But then I realized, this statement applies to underage drinking as well. How CAN we expect American teens to ever be law abiding when a rather large percentage start their adult lives breaking the law?
Edward --
The CAUSES of Illegal aliens having statistically MUCH higher (by orders of magnitude) representation in the criminal justice system, welfare population, etc. are debatable.
It could be that they are just far poorer, relatively (Mexico is far wealthier even for the poor than say Bangladesh or Somalia). Or cultural/linguistic barriers, contempt for the racially distinct gringo, whatever (Mexicans mostly despise America and Americans according to surveys done in Mexico, an amazing amount found 9/11 "justified" IIRC). Some other mechanism might be the cause of this much higher representation of criminals relative to their population.
What is not under debate is:
Admit more illegal aliens, get LOTS more crime.
"Mexicans mostly despise America"
True. So do the Greeks and Italians. We let them in ALL TOO EASILY in our grandaddys' time, and look what happened. We're not going to make the SAME MISTAKE AGAIN. Count on it.
The evidence in Colorado based on census data and department of corrections data (since I can't link to blogspot, find the Wash Park Prophet blog and search on immigration and crime for links) is that foreign born persons are about a third less likely than native born persons to be in prison for felonies. Anecdotes are not averages, and law enforcement suppositions about gang activity are often widely inaccurate in hindsight.
Of course, that doesn't distinguish between legal and illegal aliens, but there is little, if anything, to suggest that Colorado has a particularly high percentage of legal aliens among its foreign born population compared to other states, despite the fact that the foreign born population is much less affluent and have far more high school dropouts. The, by far, largest share of the foreign born population in Colorado is from Mexico.
Federal court criminal case trends are also dubious. The federal courts have a very narrow criminal jurisdiction covering only 1-2% of all criminal cases. But, federal courts have exclusive jurisdiction over immigration offenses. A rise in illegal immigrant prosecutions in federal court likely has more to do with enforcement policies than a different reality on the ground.
The outstanding warrant data may indicate that illegal aliens are more likely to flee to Mexico and avoid apprehension than native born Americans, but for lesser crimes, de facto exile is a proportionate punishment.
i cant really use any of this i need stats, in graph form.
[NM: long noise utterance elided]
[immagration: We like substantive commentary here at Winds. Seeing how long a string of "argh"-type utterances our input will take is not considered either substantive or friendly. Consider this a warning.
--Marshal Nortius "Big Tuna" Maximus]
immagration you jerk, you cocked up the whole template with your useless string of letters.
First of all in my opinion everyone needs to stop saying Illegal immagrants vs. Legal immagrants if you think about it it is only an "immagrant" if you come to this country legaly. and if they are illegal then obviously they are not immagrants they are aliens and they need to go back where they came from in my opinion we need to really tighten our border security and have way harsher punishments for people being here illegaly. a lot of them do come to this country and commit crimes so think about how many of the horible crimes would not have been committed if the ilegal aliens were not here. Do you know that the U.S. is paying for attorneys to represent kids and teens that sneak into this country?? think about that how much do lawyers cost and where else could that money go? it could go to our education and the future of this country. People sometimes call me racist but it is quite to the contrary i am half Chilen and I am part of the first full generation to be born in the U.S. My grandfather came here when he was 32 years old (Leagaly) I have 3 Uncles that were born in chile and all of them have green cards they learned the language and they work they do not use our government like many do. i could go on forever but I wont. Get them out and make the ones that are here legaly learn our language and work instead of using our welfare system.
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I am a student at Indiana University-Fort Wayne, taking a course on Latin-American Immigration currently and just wanted to add this URL to those opposing and believing that Undocumented Immigrants are horrible criminals here. Thank you.