In any case, there are some 300,000 illegal aliens in state and Federal detention systems and there are strong indications that illegal aliens do commit crime at higher rates than citizens and legal immigrants. See the crime chapters in THE DARK SIDE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. (Google it.)

Regardless, since the perpetrator was not supposed to be here in the first place, that makes the collateral damage of our immigration policies and lack of border security even more tragic for all the victims.

BTW, like the majority of Americans, I’m not “anti-immigrant” but am anti-ILLEGAL immigrant.” Like most liberals and progressives, Mr. Moskos doesn’t seem to know what the difference between legal and illegal immigrants is.

However, the most asinine thing he wrote is “(people who have the desire and means to get to the US, legally or not, may be the cream of the crop compared to those left behind).” Where is the documentation for that?

Maybe a good chunk of those “people” are hard core criminals like drug pushers and MS13 gang members. In actual fact we know that a good number of them are sexual perverts because ICE has arrested and deported about 15,000 ILLEGAL ALIEN sexual predators under Operation Predator. If you want to get really ticked off read the Sex Crimes chapter in THE DARK SIDE OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION and see what many of those “good family values” illegal immigrants are doing to children all across the USA.

“Why is there an assumption that the rate at which certain groups commit crimes will strongly correlate with the rate of arrest or imprisonment? It would seem highly plausible that people who can present a fictitious identity when arrested will be far more able to evade imprisonment than would those who have to present a real one.” If fake ID’s were effective to avoid arrest and imprisonment, every native-born criminal would have at least one.

@BSK: Yes.

Cites?

Show your work.

So, what IS my experience here? Oh right, games industry has shrunk 25% in the last 4 years, partly because of that. At least 12 individuals couldn’t take up jobs in the UK because of the new rules, all of which were highly skilled professionals, the lowest paid job of the bunch was £45k, and two of them (who would qualify, easily, for the US’s O-”superstar” visa’s (and one has in the past, in fact)) were jobs earning over £100k.

And that’s just incidents I’ve been able to find out about.

There’s a reason we – and the US, to a lesser degree – are bleeding games jobs to Canada.

Most people are deported on illegal presence charges, which is a civil infraction (like a speeding ticket). These proceedings do not require a full jury trial. Bringing illegal immigrants in on criminal charges would bankrupt the US.

But our immigration policy has been so broken for so long that NOTHING having anything to do with it makes much sense. The core of it is that political hacks IN BOTH PARTIES have voted for “tight” immigration restrictions while at the same time making sure that there is no money to enforce them – thereby being in a position to (superficially) please two groups; the anti-immigrationists and those who want cheap labor. Compounding this is the question of what effect cutting off the illegal immigration safety valve would have on Mexico. If the numbers I hear quoted that claim that money mailed home from the U.S. is the Mexican economy’s second biggest source of hard currency are rue, cutting them off could conceivably cause the collapse of the Mexican economy and government.

Whatever else we do we must bring our actual laws in better line with what we are prepared to pay to enforce.