A Two Step Approach to Illegal Immigrants Who Commit Crimes<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
J. Michael Sharman
 
Some elected officials cower behind the magnitude of problem of our 11 million illegal immigrants and claim nothing can really be done about it.  To defend their inactivity, they round up the usual suspect excuses:  It's a complex issue; it's not a state or local issue; only bigots and xenophobes see it as a problem; and any proposed solution would either be too expensive or it would be so unconstitutional the ACLU would swarm all over it like vultures to roadkill.
Most everyone agrees our current immigration policy has two major problems:  we have no real plan for stemming the tide of illegals entering our country; and we have no economically viable method for dealing with the illegals who commit crimes after they get here.
Federal and state legislators seem to be fresh out of solutions, but my wife and the shoeshine man at <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Dulles Airport came up with a couple solid ideas that would really help address the legal alien issue.
I was flying out of Dulles a week ago and the shoeshine man and I began talking about the latest terrorist threat and airport security, which led to a talk about our Border Security.
He mentioned he had immigrated from Chile, so I asked him what his opinion as an immigrant was on tightening up the security of our borders.
"You can completely shut them down, if you want," he said, "but then what are you going to do with the millions of illegals who are already here?  And," he emphasized, "once you deport them, they can just change a name or birth date and get new papers in some Central American countries and come right back."
His suggestion to address both our internal and external security is to require everyone – native born, foreign born, residents, international students, and tourists – to have a national identification card that has a non-counterfeitable link to the person holding it (such as a fingerprint) right on the card.
Tourists, students, and immigrants would not be able to enter the country without first getting that card.  No one could get a job, driver's license, bank account, etc., without showing their card.  Providing these services to anyone without a card would be a crime.
Sure, a national I.D. is a controversial issue but uncontrolled illegal immigration is a lot more controversial, and it is uncontrolled. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has 35 fugitive teams across the country who are searching for the more than 500,000 immigrants in the U.S. who have already been ordered deported by judges but who either have avoided the order or come back in the U.S. after a deportation.[1]
When my wife and I got settled with our flight en route to a conference she was speaking at, I told her about my shoeshine man's idea.  She asked some questions.  Then she followed up with a great idea of her own.
First she asked, why don't we just deport all illegals who commit crimes?
When we do, I answered, they will just turnaround and slip back with or without  new papers and, just like the shoe shine man said.  Even when they are caught, unless it is a  very serious crime, local law enforcement cannot get the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to even come get them.
"Can we lock them up here then?" she asked.
There's an estimated 630,000 illegal immigrants who are booked into our nation's jails and prisons on criminal charges each year.[2] The Federal prisons hold only about 77,000 of these at an annual cost of $1.2 billion.[3] To give an indication of the cost to states and localities of holding the remaining 553,000 illegal immigrant inmates, the cost of incarceration here in the Commonwealth of Virginia is about $23,000 per inmate per year.[4]
 "Well," she said after hearing about the cost problem, "We ought to just build prisons for them in their own countries and pay the cheaper wages there to guard them."
Lights went on for me when she said that. Many states already send their inmates to prisons in other states to separate gang members, alleviate overcrowding, avoid building new prisons, or to simply pay a cheaper incarceration rate than it would cost them in their own state. Her idea does the same thing, just internationally.
Wow! Can we copyright that idea and license it out to the States? That one simple idea legitimately bypasses the problem of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's refusal to pick up local inmates; reduces the cost of incarceration; deters reentry by repeat illegal immigrants; creates jobs in the immigrants' home countries, and reduces our own prison overcrowding.
Until we can get the federal government to pass the Dulles shoeshine man's national identification card proposal, and maybe even afterwards, my wife's idea to incarcerate illegal immigrants back in their own home country is one good way the state and local governments can get at least a little relief from this national problem.
 
 

[1] "Operation Return to Sender nabs illegal immigrants", Seattle Times, AP, June 15, 2006.

[3] "We estimate the federal cost of incarcerating criminal aliens--BOP's cost to incarcerate criminals and reimbursements to state and local governments under SCAAP--totaled approximately $5.8 billion for calendar years 2001 through 2004. BOP's cost to incarcerate criminal aliens rose from about $950 million in 2001 to about $1.2 billion in 2004--a 14 percent increase." Government Accounting Office Subject: Information on Criminal Aliens Incarcerated in Federal and State Prisons and Local Jails April 7, 2005, http://www.gao.gov/htext/d05337r.html

[4] "McDonnell Offers Plan to Punish Sex Offenders", Roanoke Times, August 19, 2005