Whaf if Howie Carr is right?

Howie Carr, the very glib Herald columnist and WRKO 680 AM talk show host often says with no shortage of juandice that "illegal aliens commit the crimes that Americans are unwilling to commit." A play on the open borders mantra "Illegal aliens only perform the jobs Americans are unwilling to do," a patronizing attitude. (Americans refuse to do those jobs at those wages, a rational response.)

Howie tends to generalize and so does the far left (witness the failure on that side of the aisle to acknowledge the failure of the Simpson-Mazzoli reform in 1986.

The GAO sheds some light on the problem. Illegal immigrants pose problems for corrections and human services. If you want to extend beyond the shrillness of the anti-immigration cabal, immigration reform will have to deal with this criminal problem honestly and without fear or favor.

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.

Somehow I don't think Congress will deal with this issue in any rational way. We can't send 11 million workers back to Mexico and elsewhere. But we can certainly do something about the small number of criminals among them.