Illegal Immigration Enforcement Joke
Atlanta's paper has a great story today, which illustrates why the feds suck:
Feds pass up tips on immigrant violators
Roswell Police Chief Edwin Williams insists that his jailers fax the names of inmates suspected of being in the country illegally to immigration agents in Atlanta. It's a practice Williams started a decade — and roughly 10,000 names — ago.
The city of 100,000 has faxed the names of 1,396 detainees to ICE in the past nine months alone, according to police department records. Immigration agents have picked up three of them, Williams said, or 1 out of every 465.
Once, an immigration official called to say the police department was wasting its time with the daily faxes, so the jailers quit. When the chief found out, he said 'You will continue. I don't care if they just throw it away, it's my fax paper.'
Immigration agents say they only have time to deport the worst of the worst; terrorists, murderers and violent gang members. "It's a simple question of priorities," said ICE's Smith. "If we're using resources to respond to somebody charged with a misdemeanor in Roswell, who are we missing?"
Feds pass up tips on immigrant violators
Roswell Police Chief Edwin Williams insists that his jailers fax the names of inmates suspected of being in the country illegally to immigration agents in Atlanta. It's a practice Williams started a decade — and roughly 10,000 names — ago.
The city of 100,000 has faxed the names of 1,396 detainees to ICE in the past nine months alone, according to police department records. Immigration agents have picked up three of them, Williams said, or 1 out of every 465.
Once, an immigration official called to say the police department was wasting its time with the daily faxes, so the jailers quit. When the chief found out, he said 'You will continue. I don't care if they just throw it away, it's my fax paper.'
Immigration agents say they only have time to deport the worst of the worst; terrorists, murderers and violent gang members. "It's a simple question of priorities," said ICE's Smith. "If we're using resources to respond to somebody charged with a misdemeanor in Roswell, who are we missing?"
posted by Exador at
9:03 AM
11 Comments:
So what are you asking for here? A souped-up stormtrooper state that will swoop in to investigate every hunch some one-bullet Barney can cook up? Are you really for real blaming the federal government because it's not big enough? This just doesn't sound like your usual position. I think you're letting your anti-immigrant thing trip up your libertarianism.
I guess I'm wondering how you're proposing to solve this problem that doesn't require a gazillion tax dollars. Did you happen to see the price tag on that ridiculous fence thing that Bush signed today? Do you think that is going to work or that it will be cost-effective? I just don't see the sense of it, beyond a late-to-the-table election-day-is-coming sop to race-Republicans.
By
bridgett, at 2:05 PM
I find your racist comments about our law enforcement professionals offensive.
Let's work smarter, rather than harder. For starters, we transfer 90% of the boob-grabbing wand jockeys from Homeland security and assign them to follow up on ICE. Take the remaining 10%, and allow them to stop and question whomever they want in the airports, without having to worry about Al Sharpton and Jesse Jacksone holding a march.
Basically, run airport security the way the Israelis do.
That'd free up a few hundred thousand workers, wouldn't it?
No increase in government size or cost, and most of us get through the airports much faster.
By
Exador, at 5:13 AM
You're easily offended. Toughen up, cutie.
I agree that the airport rent-a-cops are completely ineffective. I'm all for getting rid of most of them. One of the reasons, however, that they are so ineffective is that they are poorly trained and have poor preparation for investigative or security work. These particular people are not prime candidates for immigration enforcement, at least from what I've seen. So the recruitment and training programs would eat up about half of the cost savings you propose and would take a couple of years to implement. By which time, the shrieking classes will be obsessed with something else. Besides, the state of the national budget dictates that any "found money" would be redirected to foreign entanglements. Would you be willing to disengage from Iraq -- leave the civil war to go on without us -- to accomplish domestic aims? That's probably the choice to be made.
Personally, I think we'd be money ahead to open our borders with Mexico and Canada, though that will never happen. Sure, we'd lose a couple thouseand disgruntled lefties to the North and we'd gain a couple million righties from the South, but we'd also get a LOT more help from Mexico to develop human-capital-retention projects when they lose their entire middle-class. I think that if Mexican, Central American, and South American workers could move freely back and forth, you'd find many fewer staying. Unfortunately, the risks are so high to get here and without papers they get stuck here (afraid to get trapped when they visit back home) that they can't do what many of them want to do -- which is, make money here (tax dollars?) and retire back home (eldercare not paid for by the US). The more you really talk to immigrant families, the more you begin to realize that it's the gigantic baffling paper machine that is the problem. It might be the only time that you'll hear me propose a free market solution to anything, so enjoy it.
Failing that, I am all for a general amnesty. Legalize every mother's son and daughter of them. I don't want to pay to detain them, try them, and fly them back -- especially not when they've been resourceful and determined and self-interested enough to take the risk (after all, that sounds like a pretty desirable capitalist worker). We could (we have before, I think) institute an entry tax -- so liberalize the immigration policies but make them pay to play. (I admit that this is a very Catbert kind of idea. I would make a terrific evil adminstrator if I didn't naturally bat for the other team.)
Fuck trying to enforce the unenforceable. Figure out ways to manipulate and exploit the existing immigration stream for national benefit instead.
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bridgett, at 6:41 AM
Cutie? Mmmm. Sweet talk like that will get you far.
Sadly, you couldn't be any more wrong.
I would love to get out of Iraq, but we're stuck there for the time being.
Opening our borders with Canada and Mexico?!
Have you bumped your head?
"we'd also get a LOT more help from Mexico to develop human-capital-retention projects... "
If, by that, you mean we'd have millions more unskilled (often illiterate) people flooding our system, then you're right. We'd have no idea how many were criminals. We have enough problems with the homegrown variety.
Let's also not forget the communicable diseases they'd be bringing with them, in staggering numbers.
You are correct that they'd be going back and forth more. That's part of the problem (re diseases): They don't love the US. They don't want to live here. The come here to make money to send south. Making it easier for them to do that is a bad idea. An economic system works when capital is put back into it.
The solution is to make it harder to send the money back home. Taxing the shit out of it is probably the easiest way. If you can force them to make that trip every six months, it makes it far easier to catch them trying to get back in, especially if the pussies in congress will secure the border.
Amnesty? Never. They can be deported, if the country is willing to do it. Really, they will deport themselves if the incentives to stay here are taken away.
Right now, there is no risk to them to be caught, especially while crossing. Militarize the border.
Forced labor can be used to cover the cost of detention until deportation. I recomend handcart and shock collar factories.
Lots of criminals are resourceful and determined; that doesn't make them good citizens.
By
Exador, at 10:06 AM
Are you absolutely positive that you're a libertarian? Or is Sarcastro going to have to let "you" have it with his zombie alien pod-people gun? You are calling for a hyper-nationalist racial identity state with a enormous standing army, militarized border, and forced labor camps as an interim measure towards a more aggressive final solution.
Dude, that's just not right. I mean, it's provocative and all, but I never figured you for a "talk out your ass" sort. Now that you've got all the ranty redneck stuff out of your system, what do you really think could be done that might be done? (Seeing how the majority of voters continue to oppose gulags. Lily-livered fucks that they are.)
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bridgett, at 2:30 PM
I'm complicated.
Militarizing the border does not create "an enormous standing army". It's one of the few roles of the federal government that's actually in the constitution. We can pull soldiers from Germany, Japan, and Korea if we're shorthanded.
I was kidding about the shock collar and handcart factories, but I am in favor of some sort of labor for prisoners. Most prisoners welcome the chance to work. It breaks up the monotony, especially when you take away the TV and the weightroom.
But the real solution to the illegals is to yank out the welcome mat. That means making it unworkable, through fines and other punishments, to employ, house, or otherwise assist illegals.
I like the idea of a guest worker program, so long as it does not lead to citizenship other than the normal channels. This would force the current labor force to be in competition with the guest workers, who have been screened for criminal record and disease as part of the process.
By
Exador, at 6:21 PM
I can't shoot Exador until AFTER he buys my washer and dryer.
Once that check clears, all bets are off!
By
Sarcastro, at 7:31 PM
General Exador, if the task is to seal off several thousand miles of borderland, that can't be accomplished with a token force. And we are seriously shorthanded, thanks to dumbfuck Rumsfeld's poor strategic planning. Until we figure out what we're going to do in Iraq in the next five years that goes beyond what a kid playing with action figures might come up with, any troops pulled from anywhere will be redeployed in the unwinnable war without end. So I don't see the mass redeployment of troops being a viable idea until we juggle priorities on the national agenda.
Business likes the guestworker idea (allows them to kick capitalism old-school, no bargaining, no benefits -- sort of like 1870-1970 never happened). I'd suggest doing some research on the Bracero program, however, before you decide this would be a good way to go. I suspect that your particular profession would suffer as much (or has already) from guestwork laws as it would from outsourcing. With the size of the struggling (though not starving) white population growing, it would be unusual for the Congress to pursue guestwork laws. They wouldn't bat an eyelash to pit African-Americans and Latinos against foreign workers but many Congresspeople in border states have gotten elected by playing off race and class interests against each other. The guestworker option is opposed by nancypant liberals AND by the core of the pissed off "white right" for whom immigration is the big issue. I'm guessing that legislators won't risk the fallout, despite business pressure to do it.
Basically, the ideas left standing won't work, cost hundreds of millions, amount to a Star Wars Defense election-year boondoggle -- or, in the case of the Big Fence, hit the trifecta.
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bridgett, at 5:59 AM
Oh please, we can't hold up our deployments around the world, waiting for what might happen in Iraq. Besides, you libs are having too big of a tantrum for us to keep a significant force in Iraq for five years, which is a shame, because we should stay there longer for a real solution (see Marshal plan).
My particular profession is threatened plenty from southeast asia, not Mexico, and no people have to cross any borders.
As far as the Braceros, Boo Freakin Hoo. If they didn't like the conditions, they can always stay in their own country and develop it beyond the third world shithole that it remains today.
I've never advocated that my plan would perfectly seal the border; that's silly. The idea is to seal it to a significant effect.
That goes back to the two-pronged approach: seal the border as best as possible, while at the same time, reduce the viability of living here while illegal.
Oh yeah, and amend the constitution to eliminate the automatic citizenship of the children of illegals.
One points I forgot to hit earlier:
Libs are free to go to Canada any time they want.
"They wouldn't bat an eyelash to pit African-Americans and Latinos against foreign workers."
Are you admitting that illegals are lowering the average wage for low skilled workers?
Are you saying that they are taking American jobs?
Then my work here is done. If I can convert one lib, it's all worth it.
By
Exador, at 11:09 AM
I'm not a lib. Think lefter. No, lefter than that. A little more left. Ok, cut. (Liberals piss me off. It's something that we have in common.)
Oh, hell yeah. Only an idiot would try to argue that a steady influx of vulnerable "no benefits, no papers, no questions" workers that can be deported at a moment's notice by the same people who recruited them and runs coyote buses from Monterrey to Ottumwa (cough, IBP, cough) wouldn't keep wages low. Good lord, that's a no-brainer. In fact, that's why I think that the whole hoopty-doo about immigration is ultimately going to go nowhere -- it will spiral like a turd down the toilet on November 8th and you won't hear a word about it until the presidential race. The current system evolved for sound economic reasons (it's pretty profitable for business owners, after all) and all the squawk on the right or the left isn't going to budge it much until it is made to be less profitable for business owners. And who owns/is Congress? These guys. And their brothers and their uncles and their golf buds and their college roommates and their campaign financiers. So you're s.o.l., son. As am I.
As you have seen in your own profession, there is no such thing as an "American job" anymore. (Be careful, you're borrowing AFL-CIO rhetoric.) There are just jobs. And some of them are done by Americans, if they work cheaply enough. Or the jobs move somewhere else, while the profits just keep rolling in for the multinational corporation who is under no obligation to reinvest (or, increasingly, pay taxes) where it makes its money. So given that you're professionally more imperilled by guys in Hydrabad and Mumbai (sharp motherfuckers, aren't they?), why are you going nuts about Mexicans? Wouldn't it make more sense to be pissed off at someone a couple rungs higher on the capital food chain?
By
bridgett, at 6:18 PM
One the one hand, there is "What would happen if Exador was King", then on the other hand you've got what really will happen. You're absolutely right that nothing significant is really going to happen. The left will knuckle under whenever a mob yells racism, and the right will stand on a stump and say, "We really should do something about this. (but we aren't)"
The competition that I'm involved in is just a fact of life that isn't going away. It's just up to me to be better than they are.
Those folks in India aren't going to:
Bring Polio, leprosy, and a host of other diseases into to my country;
Burden my local hospital and school system;
Lower my property value by turning a rental home into a flophouse for 30 guys;
Make rude comments to my wife when she goes to the gas station;
Organize gangs in my community;
Commit crimes in my community in proportionately higher numbers.
So I don't get angry about them.
By
Exador, at 5:25 AM
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