I believe the illegal immigrants that have been here a long time, and have made America their home, brought up their family here, work their butts off, pay taxes, and have no other criminal record should be offered a legalization plan without the wait time......
On the other hand, the illegal immigrants who commit crimes, don't care about anything or anyone should be deported ASAP - there needs to be a fine line on who's allowed in here and who isn't.
If you had full amnesty for everyone, it would be a free for all.............
No society or country has a monopoly on crime...though it favors a utilitarian standpoint rather than a "national sovereignty" one, I'll say that the American criminal justice system can probably deal more effectively with criminals than those of their home countries can, not least due to the U.S.'s greater wealth and greater ability to afford forms of criminal justice. Such criminals would also likely inflict less suffering in an advanced first-world country than they would in their countries of origin, which are likely to have fewer law enforcement personnel and fewer outlets for victims of crime to access.
Moving on to the more pragmatic aspect of illegal immigration and crime, I'd first like to point out that according to a 2005 report by the GAO,
“We identified a population of 55,322 aliens that…had entered the country illegally and were still illegally in the country at the time of their incarceration in the country in federal or state prison or local jail during fiscal year 2003.”
Now about half of that number were incarcerated for either drug-related offenses (an authoritarian drug war benefits no one) or for simply being in the country illegally. Now these immigrants are less than 3 percent of the total prison population, which means that legal citizens and legal immigrants comprise 97 percent of the prison population. I’d say that immigrants are actually less likely to commit crimes in some instances. A (Harvard) Kennedy School of Government
study of men aged eighteen to forty found that immigrants were about one third less likely than legal citizens to be incarcerated in correctional institutions.
As I've asked previously, does a prohibitive, police state policy towards immigrants reduce crime? If there are severe criminals amongst illegal immigrants, how can the law-abiding among them report the criminals when they would be deported for stepping forward?
I would speculate that the vast majority of the criminal offenses committed by illegal immigrants would be eradicated by three simple steps.
1)
Providing amnesty for all illegal immigrants and legalizing all border crossing.
This would obviously empty prisons of the numerous illegal immigrants residing within them merely for the crime of having entered the country illegally, but legalization would also permit immigrants to unionize and demand increased salaries and benefits. At that point, immigrants would no longer exist in the impoverished state that necessitated that they commit crime.
2)
Legalizing all drugs and implementing a system of regulation and taxation on them.
This will eliminate drug-related crime, since a black market would no longer hold a monopoly over the sales of drugs, and drug cartels would vanish in the same manner as speakeasies have.
3)
Repealing the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Repealing NAFTA will result in the elimination of the unfortunate economic circumstances caused in Mexico by the spread of neoliberalism.
There is also a fourth and unlikely step that might be taken.
4)
Providing financial and military aid to the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas.
Were the Zapatistas able to overthrow the Mexican government, they would establish a more humane and free society in Mexico.
Now what precisely is so shocking about me being for amnesty?
