The more you crunch the numbers, the quicker the dominant narrative collapses on illegal immigration and crime. The statistics are grim in sanctuary state New York, and that’s true even when the almost certain assumption that the available figures are woeful underestimates is taken into account.
The Department of Homeland Security “claims that 7,113 of those currently incarcerated in New York state prisons and jails are illegal immigrants,” John R. Lott Jr. wrote for The New York Post on December 28. “They’ve been convicted of committing 148 homicides, 717 assaults, 134 burglaries, 106 robberies, 235 dangerous drugs offenses, 152 weapons offenses, and 260 sexual predatory offenses, among other crimes.”
Free-Range Criminal Illegal Aliens
These are some very bad people being housed on the taxpayer’s dime. Now come close to doubling that total when you add in that the state run by Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul has failed to honor US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers on 6,947 criminal illegal aliens since January, leading to their release into the general public.
Then realize that the true number of hardened criminals involved here is even higher than that. As Lott relates:
“Altogether, roughly 50,803 people are incarcerated in New York’s prison and jail systems: about 32,469 in the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, and another 18,334 in the state’s city and county jails.
“The 7,113 illegal aliens currently incarcerated thus make up 14% of New York’s total inmate population – and this share is likely an underestimate, because the state doesn’t actively identify immigration status.
“Another confounding factor: Immigration authorities often deport undocumented immigrants directly from prison before they finish their sentences.”
Once one is untangled from the heavy-handed establishment party line that “actually, undocumented immigrants have a lower crime rate than citizens” – a canard that anyone who pays the least bit of attention to what is happening in America’s major cities, which serve as vital hubs for the illegal immigration pipeline, can easily see through with their own eyes – common sense should prevail.
We’ll Just Break This One Law and Then We’ll Stop
The simple fact is that illegally squatting in a foreign country, participating in a parallel shadow community that necessarily removes itself from the norms of US society, and beginning your time in America by expressing your disdain for its laws by your very illegal presence in the first place is an absolute breeding ground for further criminal activity. Throw in the fact that millions of these “newcomers” today come from some of the most unstable, war-ravaged and broken cultures in the world and the dismal story writes itself.
Let’s take one key component of the illegal alien crisis.
“Human smuggling involves bringing aliens into the United States by deliberately evading immigration laws and unlawfully transporting and harboring aliens who are already unlawfully present in the United States,” ICE notes on its website. “Human smuggling is a gateway crime for additional criminal offenses, including illegal immigration, identity theft, document and benefit fraud, gang activity, financial fraud and terrorism.”
This doesn’t just apply to the smugglers themselves. When an illegal alien is bundled into the US via highly exploitative, deeply inhumane and often extremely violent means, should we really expect him to immediately successfully assimilate into the law-abiding society he has just broken into?
Then there is the vast damage wrought by this shadow community by the very manner in which it functions.
‘Illegality Breeds Illegality’
Once upon a time, America’s political and cultural leaders understood this terribly corrosive aspect of the illegal alien problem. In 1981, the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy, an entity created by Democrat President Jimmy Carter in 1978, released its final report, titled “US Immigration Policy and the National Interest.”
The panel was made up of notable establishment progressives, including Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy and University of Notre Dame President Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, who served as chairman.
“[T]here is evidence that shows that the toleration of large-scale undocumented/illegal immigration can have pernicious effects on US society…. Most serious is the fact that illegality breeds illegality,” the report read. “The presence of a substantial number of undocumented/ illegal aliens in the United States has resulted not only in a disregard for immigration law but in the breaking of minimum wage and occupational safety laws, and statutes against smuggling as well. As long as undocumented migration flouts US immigration law, its most devastating impact may be the disregard it breeds for other US laws.”
Forty-five years later, and that disregard has become ubiquitous. Why should anyone not expect it to spill over into the worst forms of criminal activity?
“[I]t’s hardly surprising that violent crime surged by a record 59% during [former President] Joe Biden’s four years in office – the largest percentage increase ever, over any four-year period – at the same time the United States experienced an unprecedented influx of illegal aliens,” Lott notes.
Pat sayings like “correlation does not imply causation” lose all meaning when the observable track record of the illegal immigration disaster is closing in on a half century of steadily accelerating squalor, degradation, and suffering.
