[Dean's World] Aziz P: Illegal immigration is not a crime

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Aziz P:
Illegal immigration is not a crime
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1189354091.shtml


   [1]Rudy agrees:

     GIULIANI: Glenn, it's not a crime. I know that's very hard for
     people to understand, but it's not a federal crime.

     GLENN: It's a misdemeanor but if you've been nailed, it is a crime.
     If you've been nailed, ship back and come back, it is a crime.

     GIULIANI: Glenn, being an illegal immigrant, the 400,000 were not
     prosecuted for crimes by the federal government, nor could they be.
     I was U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York. So
     believe me, I know this. In fact, when you throw an immigrant out
     of the country, it's not a criminal proceeding. It's a civil
     proceeding.

     GLENN: Is it --

     GIULIANI: One of the things that congress wanted to do a year ago
     is to make it a crime, which indicates that it isn't.

     GLENN: Should it be?

     GIULIANI: Should it be? No, it shouldn't be because the government
     wouldn't be able to prosecute it. We couldn't prosecute 12 million
     people. We have only 2 million people in jail right now for all the
     crimes that are committed in the country, 2.5 million. If you were
     to make it a crime, you would have to take the resources of the
     criminal justice system and increase it by about 6. In other words,
     you'd have to take all the 800,000 police, and who knows how many
     police we would have to have.

   [2]Tom Tancredo agrees:

     Right now, illegal presence in the USA is not a crime; it is a
     civil infraction. The House Judiciary Committee voted to make it a
     felony but then was counseled that millions of new felons could
     clog our courts.

     Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., wrote an amendment to his own
     bill asking that the penalty be reduced from a felony to a
     misdemeanor; 191 Democrats and a few Republicans voted to keep the
     felony penalty in the hope that it would be a poison pill to defeat
     the measure.

   Discuss.

References

   1. http://www.glennbeck.com/news/09072007.shtml
   2. http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2006/03/opposing_view_m.html