“American found guilty of murder and multiple rapes” is a headline you’ll never see. But how often have you seen:
“Illegal immigrant found guilty of . . .”
People reading the latter are highly unlikely to realize that they are being manipulated. But they are: the headlines about illegal immigrants are cherry-picked by the anti-immigrationists.
The statistics are irrelevant: you can’t punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty.
If 1 out of 10 illegal immigrants commits felonies (a ratio that has to be much too high, but let’s assume it is right), it provides zero justification for interfering with the freedom of the other 9 out of 10.
The government may not even “vet” the immigrants. It may not stop them and ask for ID—unless there’s “probable cause” relating to the individuals, such as erratic behavior or brandishing weapons.
In other words, the standards for everybody—citizen, visitor, migrant worker, or anyone else—have to be the same. If the government should stop everyone at the border and ask for ID or fingerprint them or look them up in a database, then the government should stop everyone at every crossroads within the country and vet you as well.
The standards for what the police can do to an individual have nothing to do with whether he is a citizen or not, or falls into one category or another. The police can do nothing without evidence against that specific individual.
I’ve said this before, though it bears repeating. The new point is the dishonesty of reporting on crime as if it’s only a problem among immigrants. It isn’t.
P.S. [added 9/17/25] There is another crucial point: crime is small potatoes—compared to the government’s crime against millions of potential immigrants.
Crime can be drastically reduced by legalizing drugs. That would instantly eliminate all the drug cartels, by making the selling of cocaine, heroin, etc. no more profitable than the selling of aspirin.
Our drug laws create and sustain the cartels.
Immigration controls are a rights-violating way to “solve” a problem created by a rights-violation (drug laws). And, since the immoral is the impractical, the “solution” solves nothing.