ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION and CRIME, By James R. Edwards 2004

Illegal Immigration and Crime
By James R. Edwards, Jr.

Posted November 22, 2004 (FIGURES ARE VERY DATED)
Immigrant criminality represents perhaps the worst abuse of the liberty aliens enjoy in the United States. Increasingly, the government closest to the people either finds its hands tied or cravenly abrogates its responsibility to fellow Americans within its jurisdiction. Moreover, the illegal element exacerbates the economic and other burdens caused by legal immigration.
The current high rate of sustained, mass immigration—more than one million legal immigrants plus half a million illegal aliens every year—forces many states and localities into turmoil. The illegals certainly live outside the obligations that those who live under the "consent of the governed" owe to each other: While the principles of the Declaration of Independence guarantee all human beings certain natural and unalienable rights, only parties who have consented to our government deserve the full rights of citizenship. Illegal immigrants are not part of the social contract giving legitimacy to this government. American citizens have not given their consent to higher taxes, crowded schools, jammed emergency rooms, clogged roads, unlawful turning of single-family homes into hotels or apartments into tenements, forced multicultural amenities such as bilingual education and multilingual ballots, or welfare and other services subsidizing poverty-prone immigrants. Above all, they never consented to higher crime rates.

While anyone who decries illegal immigration is required to distinguish it from legal immigration, the effects of legal immigration should first be noted. Robert Samuelson recently wrote in his Washington Post column that "Hispanics account for most of the increase in poverty" since 1990. "Compared with 1990, there were actually 700,000 fewer non-Hispanic whites in poverty last year . . . . Meanwhile, the number of poor Hispanics is up by 3 million since 1990. The health insurance story is similar. Last year 13 million Hispanics lacked insurance. They're 60 percent of the rise since 1990." And of course a growing proportion of the Hispanic population is immigrants poorer than their predecessors. Samuelson remarks that the black poverty rate in this period has actually dropped, from 32 to 24 percent.
To add to Samuelson's observations, consider the reports from the Center for Immigration Studies by its Steven Camarota and Harvard's George Borjas detailing the negative economic impact of recent immigrants on native-born wages and employment. Illegal immigrants impose an even greater burden, because they pay few taxes and they drain public services such as health care, education, and other benefits of the welfare state. While many federal programs deny assistance to illegals, many state and local programs and privileges are open to them. The National Academy of Sciences found in a 1997 landmark study that immigrantheaded households in 1994-1995 placed a net annual fiscal burden on California native-born residents of $1,178 per native household.That is, each American family in California subsidized that state's immigrant population by nearly $1,200 a year.
The NAS report also said fiscal impacts tend to benefit the federal government and drain state and local government resources. "Much like anyone else in the population, immigrants use services that are costly to provide, or that others can use less freely—so-called congestion costs. Examples include services from roads, sewers, police and fire departments, libraries, airports, and foreign embassies." Therefore, having a much larger immigrant population (29 percent of the U.S. foreign-born, a fourth of the State's population) bloats California's budget significantly.
The national government has exclusive power over immigration, and it has mandated certain public benefits for immigrants, legal or illegal, such as public education (see the 1982 Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe). States and localities then bear the costs and consequences of all immigration.And they respond differently, with differing consequences for their people.
The Florida legislature rejected a bill issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens. Kansas state legislators voted to give illegal aliens instate college tuition. Alabama and Florida state police work closely with federal immigration enforcers. New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have "sanctuary" policies that keep city employees, even police, from asking about immigration status. An Idaho county commissioner billed Mexico for the $2 million illegal aliens owe for county services.