A friend of a friend is one of the DREAMers. She toddled into America with her parents who came here to work. Now college-age, she is among the approximately 800,000 young people who are impacted by President Donald Trump’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. DACA is set to end in six months if Congress does not find a more permanent solution.
DACA was created in 2012 by President Barack Obama’s administration to allow children brought to this country illegally by their parents to receive permission to work, study and obtain a driver’s license. The applicants had to be younger than 31 when the program began and had to prove that they had lived in the U.S. continuously since June 15, 2007, and that they arrived here before age 16. Also required is no criminal record, enrollment in high school or college, or military service. They may renew their status every two years.
These people, many of whom have spent most of their lives in America, are from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Asia, South Korea and the Philippines. They live in every state in this country.
So, mom and pop come to America to work and they bring their children, as most parents would. The children grow up, but they are undocumented and illegal. The Obama administration used executive action to create the program after no legislative solution was found to protect minors who were brought to America. For many, like the friend of a friend, our country is the only country they’ve ever known.
Trump pledged on the campaign trail to undo what Obama put in place as president. You know, he is draining the swamp and really hammering down on illegal immigration … by going after non-criminal students and members of the military – people whose status we now know.
If Trump wants to get tough on illegal immigrants, he should start with the criminals he referred to during the presidential campaign. There are plenty of bad apples on the tree, but he’s going after the low-hanging fruit. Why?
Here are a few facts from the Pew Research Center about illegal immigration in the U.S.: There were 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. in 2015, a small decline since 2009; Mexicans may no longer be the majority of unauthorized immigrants, as their numbers dropped from 5.6 million in 2015 compared to 6.4 million in 2009; the U.S. civilian workforce includes 8 million unauthorized immigrants; the largest populations of unauthorized immigrants (59 percent) live in California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois; and about two-thirds (66 percent) of adults in 2014 had been in the U.S. at least a decade.
Enough information about unauthorized immigrant populations exists for Pew to conduct research and track it for comparisons over many years. One report tracked percentages of illegals in the U.S. since 1995. According to Pew, 8 million are in the civilian workforce. They have jobs – provided by Americans.
It seems to me, if you want to get tough on illegal immigration punishing the enablers would be a good place to start. If American businesses aren’t hiring illegal workers, then there would be no demand. But, they are.
Another way we could get tough is to crack down on the criminals. According to the Heritage Foundation, the Government Accountability Office released two reports in 2005 on criminal aliens who are in prison for committing crimes in the U.S., and issued an updated report in 2011.
The first report found that criminal aliens (both legal and illegal) make up 27 percent of all federal prisoners. The Center for Immigration Studies says non-citizens are only about nine percent of the nation’s adult population. So according to the Heritage Foundation, based on numbers in federal prisons, non-citizens commit federal crimes at three times the rate of citizens.
The findings in the second report looked at the criminal histories of 55,322 aliens who “entered the country illegally and were still illegally in the country at the time of their incarceration in federal or state prison or local jail during fiscal year 2003.” Those 55,322 illegal aliens had been arrested 459,614 times, an average of 8.3 arrests per illegal alien, and had committed almost 700,000 criminal offenses, an average of roughly 12.7 offenses per illegal alien, according to the Heritage Foundation.
Out of all the arrests, 12 percent were for violent crimes such as murder, robbery, assault and sex-related crimes; 15 percent were for burglary, larceny, theft and property damage; 24 percent were for drug offenses; and the remaining offenses were for DUI, fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, weapons, immigration, and obstruction of justice.
So, there’s the criminal element to which Trump referred while campaigning. In my humble, non-expert opinion, those are the people we should be rounding up and giving the boot. If 55,000 or so people have been arrested almost 460,000 times – an average 8.3 times per illegal alien, as the Heritage Foundation noted – why aren’t we taking care of that problem BEFORE we hone in on those with non-criminal records? If safety and security are a priority, why aren’t we addressing the real problem?
Shea Wilson is the former managing editor of the El Dorado News-Times. E-mail her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @SheaWilson7.