Denver Post Continues to Peddle Pro-Illegal Alien Mythology

Speak of the devil, in today's Denver comPost we have the long-haired hippy and 1970s fossil Mike Littwin yet again peddling a utopian view of illegal aliens with the long debunked canard that illegal aliens don't contribute to crime. How does he do this? By disingenously pointing to the lowering crime rates in Arizona as evidence. This is easily enough debunked; what really amazes me is that people actually can get and keep jobs with newspapers writing this kind of mythological crap. Quite sneakily, and undoubtedly to avoid complaints of bias, he cites a CATO Institute commentator by the name of Daniel Griswold who made the claim that crime overall in the country is down, including in Arizona in a very short and rather flaccid piece. First of all, the CATO Instutiute is known for its promotion of amnesty (any search of their website will bear this out). Littwin probably thought it would add weight to his argument to cite a CATO study instead of a similar one by, say, La Raza. Secondly, the CATO Institute picked this piece up from Commentary Magazine, where it was originally published. Commentary has been criticized as being not much more than an ethnocentric think tank publication published by neoconservative Jews which promotes Jewish interests the way La Raza promotes Mexican interests. Not exactly a publication of mass-appeal and not exactly one that a person should rely on for accurate information, either.

In reailty, there are plenty of government studies which talk about the massive dark side to illegal aliens which CATO, Commentary and Littwin are ignoring. Go figure. Maybe its because they all have an agenda? We are supposed to believe that the illegal alien explosion has nothing to do with the chronologically coinciding explosion of Mexican gangs from California to Washington, D.C. and even to Ontario, Canada? Indeed, this little factoid and others are missing entirely from the pleadings of the CATO institute and its ideological allies. Unknown to many is United States Government Accountability Office studies showing that

In our population study of 55,322 illegal aliens, we found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990. They were arrested for a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses, averaging about 13 offenses per illegal alien. One arrest incident may include multiple offenses, a fact that explains why there are nearly one and half times more offenses than arrests. Almost all of these illegal aliens were arrested for more than 1 offense. Slightly more than half of the 55,322 illegal aliens had between 2 and 10 offenses. About 45 percent of all offenses were drug or immigration offenses. About 15 percent were property-related offenses such as burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and property damage. About 12 percent were for violent offenses such as murder, robbery, assault, and sex-related crimes. The balance was for such other offenses as traffic violations, including driving under the influence; fraud--including forgery and counterfeiting; weapons violations; and obstruction of justice. Eighty percent of all arrests occurred in three states--California, Texas, and Arizona. Specifically, about 58 percent of all arrests occurred in California, 14 percent in Texas, and 8 percent in Arizona.

What does the epicenter of this argument - Arizona - have to say about this? The Maricopa County DA released some data of their own as well, which said in part,

County Attorney Andrew Thomas released today the results of research by his office showing the illegal immigrant crisis is having a profound impact on crime. An analysis of all defendants sentenced for felonies in 2007 in Maricopa County Superior Court shows 18.7% to be in the United States illegally. Factoring in a random sample of those whose immigration status was initially unknown and later determined to be illegal, the study finds that the number rises to 21.8%. By comparison, illegal immigrants constitute an estimated 9% of the total population.

The analysis found that in 2007, illegal immigrants accounted for:

- 16.5% of those sentenced for violent crimes
- 18.5 % of those sentenced for property crimes
- 33.5% of those sentenced for the manufacture, sale, or transport of drugs
- 50% of those sentenced for crimes related to "chop shops"
- 35.8% of those sentenced for kidnapping
- 20.3% of those sentenced for felony DUI.

Likewise, for crimes more generally associated with illegal immigration, illegal immigrants accounted for:

- 44% of those sentenced for forgery and fraud
- 85.3% of those convicted of criminal impersonation for false ID
- 96% of those convicted for human smuggling.

It is estimated that each violent crime costs citizens about $20,000, and each property crime costs citizens $4,363 per offense.

Crime may be down overall, but that is no reason to think that illegal aliens aren't causing a huge crime problem in this country. To argue this is a logical fallacy at best, and dishonest at worst.

In another one of Littwin's race card arguments (lifted from Griswold), he attacks detractors of amnesty such as Tom Tancredo and Lou Dobbs for warning about the threat of multiculturalism endangering American culture by cutely comparing it to Italian immigration in the late 20th century as if its remotely similar. Hint: Italians assimilated, came legally, and in much smaller numbers. Mexicans, many millions who have given the finger to American law (and Americans by extension) by coming here illegally, have no intention to assimilate, hence the birth of the term "multiculturalism." It's not a hard conclusion to come to: millions of unassimilable, indeed often outright hostile, Mexican flag waving Mexicans settle here and eventually gain the demographic majority. Who in their right mind would think these people would remotely care about the Founding Fathers and the intentions they had for this nation, let alone the European-originated culture it has always held since its inception? The majority of Mexican activists have done nothing but thumb their noses at this country. Mexico intelligently partly bases its immigration policy on not upsetting the demographic balance. Why don't we have the common sense to bring back our own version of this law?

Littwin's blindness must be voluntary; do liberals go through a process of poking their eyes out or something? His cutesy tie-in, upon closer analysis, falls flat. Welcome to Mejico Norte.
Please, Littwin, find better sources for your silly arguments.

It should be obvious to anyone with an IQ higher than 10 that people who give the finger to the rule of law upon entering the country have no interest in suddenly playing nice-nice once we give them what they want. Hello, McFly...

The amnesty of 1986 granted 3 million illegal aliens instantaneous legal status. As a result of that, illegal migration was encouraged and ballooned to where we are now burdened with 12 million illegal aliens, a four-fold increase in migration. It is then safe to estimate that any kind of amnesty or euphemistically titled legalization scheme will take the 12 million illegals here now and blow it up another four-fold in the coming years, leaving us with a rounded off total of FIFTY MILLION ILLEGAL ALIENS. This country will collapse under the weight, you can bet on it.