Is it 9 million, 11 million, 20 million or 38 million?
In any case, we are talking anywhere from 4 to nearly 16.5 times the size of our prison population. This does not include the folks who rent housing to them, employ them, or who know/suspect someone is here illegally and doesn't report them.
Folks, this is getting to be just like Prohibition. The enforcement of those laws have had some huge breakdowns (I'll blog more about those later), including the accidental deportation of an American citizen.
Just keep those facts in mind the next time Tom Tancredo, Michelle Malkin, or any other hard-liner throws a fit about this issue.
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5 comments:
If it's 38 million, then:
1. More than 1 in 8 persons residing in the United States is an illegal immigrant; and
2. Illegal immigrants are therefore far less likely to be engaged in criminal activity than native-born citizens.
The Tancredobots can't have both sides of the issue.
The numbers came from "CAPS" and The Social Contract Press, both John Tanton based organizations and both flagged by the SPLC as "Hate Groups". Considering the material published by The Social Contract Press, I would agree.
Doesn't matter though. The anti-immigration folks will pounce on them. The thing is, these numbers are indicative of the other stats Numbers USA spouts. None of them are accurate, yet the "conservative" media lets them get away with it.
SJ Reidhead
The Pink Flamingo
Even if the illegal alien population is some large multiple of the total number of incarcerated persons (prison, jail, and halfway house) it still wouldn't render an intelligently designed deportation system unworkable. The average wait for a deportation hearing is 33 days, so if we were deport 20% of the (say) 13 million illegals in this country (with the bulk of the remainder self-deporting) we would need only about 15000 new two-person cells to accommodate the influx. This new capacity is equivalent to a typical four month period worth of prison expansion in the US; it's hardly some new Gulag.
By the way, no one I've seen ever uses that absolutely rediculous "38 million illegals" figure. Most mainstream immigration reform groups put the number at 13-16 million, numbers which are roughly identical with government estimates.
Addendum:
My estimate was based on a eight year interval of deportation.
13000000 illegals * 0.2 share deported / 8 years / 365 days * 33 days to hearing / 2 per cell ~= 15000 new cells
The average wait for a deportation hearing is 33 days, so if we were deport 20% of the (say) 13 million illegals in this country (with the bulk of the remainder self-deporting) we would need only about 15000 new two-person cells to accommodate the influx.
The only way to get the illegal aliens to self-deport is to make conditions in the United States significantly worse than conditions in their countries of origin.
The notion that one can make conditions very bad for one group, and one group only, without any adverse impact on those outside that group, is pure fantasy.
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