Sharp hike in U.S. immigration charges
Federal data released today show a very sharp increase in the number of criminal immigration cases the U.S. Department of Justice is prosecuting – up 16 percent in fiscal year 2009. As a result, federal prosecutions overall are at an all-time high.
An analysis from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse – a non-profit at Syracuse University that routinely wrests data from the federal government through the Freedom of Information Act – shows how much federal law enforcement priorities have shifted during the decade now drawing to a close.
Although there are more federal prosecutions than ever, there are only a third as many securities fraud cases as in 2002 and a quarter of the corporate fraud cases brought in 2003.
Of the 91,899 criminal immigration cases in FY 2009, just 8 cases accused employers (at 13 companies) of felony charges of hiring undocumented workers, and 24 cases accused 36 individuals of knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants. Almost all of the criminal immigration cases – 9 out of 10 – charged undocumented immigrants with illegal entry into the country. (Note: These data are for criminal cases, not civil deportation cases.)
The data are for the year ended Sept. 30, which means that the period spanned the Bush and Obama administrations. As the analysis notes, many of the cases filed during the Obama administration may have been in the pipeline before Obama took office.
When Attorney General Eric Holder outlined the Justice Department’s priorities before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, he didn’t use the word “immigration” once – he talked about terrorism, international organized crime, economic crime and narcotics as his priorities. The truth, though, is that most of his criminal cases are against people whose aim is to work hard at a job in the United States.
Unless there are factors that would justify the figures that Paul Moses presents, then the federal government’s use of its prosecutorial power and discretion is hard, if not impossible, to defend.
Mr. Moses,
I do not know enough to even ask questions about “the immigration problem”, except this one. Why do so many Mexicans emigrate in the first place? The obvious, simple answer is: because they’re desperately poor. But *why* are they desparetly poor? I’ve been to Mexico only twice on vacation (and I loved it), but even a surface look tells me that the answer isn’t simply a matter of a barren landscape which will not easily yield a good material life to its burgeoning population.
But surely the answer to the poverty question is somewhere in Mexico, not primarily at least, in the United States. The U. S. Is the Prmised Land.
It seems that there is a tacit assumption that “the” problem must be solved by the U. S. But I wonder. I have never seen any discussion of the responsibility of the Mexicans themselves, especially the upper classes (thecold rich and the new) to solve the problems of Mexican poverty.
My real question is: what are the Mexican bishops — and other Catholics — saying and doing about their poverty and immigration problems?
(Yes, I do get tired of the Blame-the-Americans chant. Sometimes it’s a crutch.)
Ann: America magazine had a very good essay addressing the questions you raise on the Oct. 15 2007 issue:
http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10278
I’d also add that I think the people who come looking for work deserve better as they add much more to the economy than they take away. Moreover, the US has certain responsibilities for the corruption in Mexico (we could start by stop using drugs) and that seems unjust to punish poor workers while we wait for an undemocratic regime to get its act together.
Also, kudos to Paul for bringing this story. It needs to be published elsewhere!
David –
I don’t blame the poor Mexicans at all, except the drug dealers. and , yes, they contribute a lot here. But it seems to me that the first responsibility belongs be to the well-off Mexicans. It is a terrible thing that the fathers have to leave their familes and terrible that the children are without a parent. It is true that Mexico is not well favored with natural resources, but the Mexicans have an extremely creative culture and given decent educations I don’t doubt they could prosper.
In the area of CA where we live, we have lots of Mexican immigrants, many undocumented, and our Mexican friends range from farm worker types those with better jobs in the technical fields.
All groups have a mixture of good and bad of course, and Mexicans are no different. Some are lazy, others are drunks, and some cause other problems. Still I must say that on balance, in our town anyway, thankfully most of this group are hard working and decent types. In discussing all this then, it is important to keep in mind that we are talking about real people, real families, real individuals; not just statistics.
Now obviously, there are some serious problems in all this. They include but are not limited to; the Mexican government and its legendary ineptitude and corruption, illegal drug use in the USA, and our counter-productive immigration policy.
That the ruling class in Mexico routinely encourages their poor to leave (i.e pawns them off on us Gringos) speaks volumes about the ineptitude of the Mexican ruling class. On the other hand, that some Americans think so little of their fellow citizens (and even less of the Mexicans by the way) that they want their house painted or their kids tended on the cheap by indocumentados, and when the job is finished, the same Americans hollers and moans about illegal immigration is also confounding. That after border state Americans coaxed old Jose up here to do some work cheap, and basically told him that is he just worked hard enough long enough, that things would be ok, and now that Jose has been here ten or twenty years and has built his life (e.g., wife, kids, home, etc.), some Americans are willing to just toss him back across the border fence and say “next time, follow the rules” is astounding. We Americans are better than that. The fact is we Americans – for all our faults – are the most fair-minded and immigrant-friendly group of people on earth, and we should be true to ourselves.
One counter-intuitive thing that I find most Americans do not understand, is that the tighter we make our border with Mexico, the more problems we will have. Please allow me to explain. The Mexicans I know mainly work in agriculture and once the harvest is in and the work slows down, most would prefer to drive back to Mexico, spend Christmas and the first part of the new year with their wife and kids, and come back to California in the spring, in time for planting and the new season. In fact before we started closing off the border that is exactly what many of them did.
However now that it is becoming more and more difficult to cross the border without papers, these guys have to pay coyotes to help them cross. Sometimes the coyote robs them blind; in any case it is expensive, and risky. And so once they make it up here, they work the summer season, and then endure the slow winter time, of course pining for their wife and kids. Because of the cost and danger associated with crossing the border via Coyotes, they really cannot afford to return to Mexico to visit. Eventually they save enough to pay the coyote to bring wife (and sometimes even kids) across the border, and then they stay up here together, but still lonely for old grandma or uncle or brother; for extended family members. Still, even without extended family, it is better than just the husband being here alone. Any new children born here of course are American citizens.
Now the other thing to note is that bureaucracy simply will not work in this situation. A bureaucrat – well meaning though he may be – will say some thing like “Well we need to set up a work program and people could present passports, apply by filling out some paperwork and we would review cases, etc., etc.” ad nauseum. None of that will work – at all.
Both the anti-Mexican types and the do-gooders fail to understand these folks. They are not trying to leech off of, or destroy America; they are simply trying to work and provide for their families. They are independent and stubborn, and do not want to be part of a bureaucratic program. Most are rural types with maybe a forth grade education and the men simply want to wander up here for work and return to their families when the work is done for the year, and repeat that cycle. They have their own brains; they can think, and they do not want to be coddled as “special people”.
And so much to the dismay of my conservative friends, I tend toward leaving the door open for Mexicans. It will be a lot cheaper and will cause fewer problems.
I guess what I am essentially saying is that, we should relax and enjoy life. The more we stir this, the more it will stink.
Even is we managed to close the border (with massive manpower and government expenditure), we would then need to spend even more government money, to hire the bureaucrats necessary to administer the work programs and issue temporary work visas for the Mexican farm workers we need each and every year. Spend money to keep Mexicans out, spend more money to let Mexicans in; it would just go on and on to the point of being ridiculous. Sure the border guards and bureaucrats (with good jobs and pensions) would be fat and happy, but almost nobody else would be.
No, we have enough to worry about without chasing down every Mexican who wanders up here is search of work. True, there are people in this world who do want to harm us, but they are not Mexicans.
I say regarding Mexican indocumentados, they are not perfect and we should of course cooperate with Mexico on running down criminals and with intercepting terrorists but otherwise, we should relax, and enjoy some tacos and flan.
:-)
I suspect that most cases were initiated well before Obama came to grips with local USA offices and overall DHS policy, which really wasn’t until June or even later in some jurisdictions. I do know that DHS has initiated a policy of focusing on immigrants that have been convicted here or abroad of significant crimes (not traffic stops). You need more than the current dataset to come to any conclusions. Mounting cases against employers is a lot more difficult. Someone has papers or they don’t — whether someone acted illegally in hiring them is a whole lot harder to prove.
Thanks, Barbara. Your comment is helpful.
To respond to Ann Olivier … I would agree that immigration is a difficult issue, but I don’t think prosecuting illegal immigrants criminally will have much of a deterrent effect. Meanwhile, the Justice Department is devoting a lot of its resources to a problem prosecution can’t solve and is not bringing as many cases in other important areas.
If you are not familiar with the Bracero program of the past, read here: http://www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/history/timeline/17.html
A telling point is made in this article:
“It seemed whenever the United States found a reason to close the door on Mexican immigration, a historic event would force them to reopen that door. Such was the case when the United States entered World War II. In 1942, the United States was heading to war with the fascist powers of Europe. Labor was siphoned from all areas of United States industry and poured into those which supported the war efforts. Also in that year, the United States signed the Bracero Treaty which reopened the floodgates for legal immigration of Mexican laborers. Between the period of 1942 and 1964, millions of Mexicans were imported into the U.S. as “braceros” under the Bracero Program to work temporarily on contract to United States growers and ranchers. ….. At the end of World War II, Mexican workers were ousted from their jobs by workers coming out of wartime industries and by returning servicemen. By 1947, the Emergency Farm Labor Service was working on decreasing the amount of Mexican labor imported. By the 1960s, an overflow of “illegal” agricultural workers along with the invention of the mechanical cotton harvester, diminished the practicality and appeal of the bracero program. These events, added to the gross humanitarian violations of bracero employers, brought the program to an end in 1964.”
Another point that possibly is the most telling can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_Program
“Labor unions which tried to organize agricultural workers after WWII targeted the Bracero program as a key impediment to improving the wages of domestic farm workers. These unions included the National Farm Laborers Union (NFLU), later called the National Agricultural Workers Union (NAWU), headed by Ernesto Galarza, and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), AFL-CIO. During his tenure with the Community Service Organization, César Chávez was given a grant by the AWOC to organize in Oxnard, California which culminated in a protest of domestic U.S. agricultural workers of the U.S. Department of Labor’s administration of the program. In January of 1961, in an effort to publicize the effects of bracero labor on labor standards, the AWOC led a strike of lettuce workers at 18 farms in the Imperial Valley, an agricultural region on the California-Mexico border and a major destination for braceros.“
As Ken so succinctly pointed out above: when having cheap labor to use and abuse is advantageous to the US citizen, these folks are welcome. However, when these workers start to rebel against offered wages and working conditions, then it’s time to ship the ungrateful SOBs home.
Mr. Moses –
I don’t think the illegals should be prosecuted.
Strangely, on the other hand, there is the push to include illegals in the census. Which has caused many, including the Catholic hierarchy, to object as the info may be used against the immigrants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/us/23latino.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
I am not sure, but I tend to agree with certain Latino activists (here in California), who are cautioning indocumentados regarding the census and recommending that they do not fill out a census form.
Given the current American thought on this, telling the government that you are a non-citizen, that you are without papers, and giving them your name and address might not be the best idea.
Now of course, the other view is that states like California or Texas have loads of Mexicans, and since congressional representation is determined via the census count, that it is only fair to count these folks; fair to American citizens of those states, that is.
Politicians and federal representation and fairness are one thing, but if you are Jose with wife, five or six kids, mortgage and car loan (not an uncommon situation by the way) and you do not have papers, will the fact that California got one more congressional representative be much consolation as you are on the INS bus on your way to Tijuana, because they tracked you down via census form? Is the possibility that your life could be turned upside down have been worth one more representative for Fresno?
The question is the same old one; should the Mexican trust the American?
If I was a Mexican without papers, unless someone could really convince me otherwise; I would lay low for this census.