By Juan Mann
05/08/2006
As the so-called public debate on immigration law enforcement reaches greater heights of stupidity, it becomes increasingly necessary to look at the reality of what forty years of massive legal and out-of-control illegal immigration has done to these United States and its law-abiding citizens … one case at a time.
From time to time, I've discussed some amazing tales sent in by VDARE.com readers:
And the latest batch of mail is no less compelling.
First of all, the stream of reader e-mails requesting the latest information on reporting illegal aliens shows NO SIGN of ever letting up.
So in case you've missed it before, here’s the quickest way of reporting illegal aliens — that is, if you're not in a border area with a U.S. Border Patrol station nearby.
Next, we hear a lot from VDARE.com readers who have followed up on reporting illegal aliens and criminal alien residents and who have realized that nothing has happened. Often, the federal immigration bureaucracy apparently couldn’t care less about these reports.
(But it’s still worth doing. The bureaucracy has to start a file for each report — and they know that, come the Revolution, or a Tancredo Presidency, those files might come back to haunt them.)
A VDARE.com reader tells the tale of not only falling victim to Hurricane Katrina, but also being saddled with uninvited illegal aliens as part of the aftermath of the storm:
Date: 4/10/06
Subject: Reporting Doesn’t Work
"I just wanted to let people know that reporting illegal aliens does no good unless they [the illegal aliens] are on the fugitive list. We have been dealing with an El Salvadoran who lives in a tent on some property near ours. We met him when he found my husband’s lost wallet. At first, he kept coming around wanting a ride to Walmart to buy phone cards. Then he started eating at our house (almost every day). Lately, he has shown up at our front door as early as 5:00 AM wanting me to put his cell phone on the charger.
"He goes almost every morning to Home Depot, where he waits with a hundred or so other Latinos for someone to pick him up for work. He works almost every day. He sent a total of $7,000 back to El Salvador for a " coyote" to smuggle his wife into the country. Then, he apparently got the idea that we could rent him our FEMA trailer since we had our new home set up now. He speaks no English and we understand very little Spanish, but we tried to make him understand that we couldn’t do that. His wife was supposed to arrive last Monday and didn’t show up. He found out yesterday that she had been detained by immigration in Texas.
"The [DHS/ICE] agent called and I talked to him last night. He said all [the illegal alien] has to do is go to the Greyhound bus station and buy a ticket from Kingsville, TX, to Gulfport, MS, and they are sending her here to meet him. When we found out he had sent for her, we reported him to immigration (the local border patrol office and the ICE office). We were told that they don’t have anywhere to keep them and that even if he was picked up, he would be processed and released to await an appearance before an [EOIR] immigration judge.
"Of course, if he doesn’t appear, then they just wait until (if) he ever gets picked up again, then they will deport him. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a very nice guy, but we lost everything to Hurricane Katrina and now it looks like we're going to have two people who don’t speak English spending a lot of time at our house. I just thought I would let you know that the system doesn’t work AT ALL!"
4/13/06 – "As an update, the wife arrived yesterday."
Another VDARE.com reader testifies to the havoc caused by illegal alien drunk drivers, and what citizens can do to report these immigration law-breakers. Fortunately, no one was injured or killed this time around.
"About two weeks ago, a car that my wife and I had bought two days prior was totaled by a drunk, unlicensed driver with no insurance and bogus plates on the car. Thankfully, the car was parked in front of our apartment at the time and no one was injured.
"I have serious doubts about the driver and the driver’s family’s immigration status. As such, I feel that trying to sue then or even take them to small claims court seems useless, as people who are living completely under the radar with no respect for the laws and procedures of this country are unlikely to have bank accounts, reportable/sizeable assets, etc.
"How would you advise that I go about trying to determine the immigration status of this family and seeing that they are no longer allowed to live without any regard for the responsibilities of living in the United States?
Unfortunately, as ordinary American citizens, we have no sure-fire way of finding out whether someone in particular is in the country illegally or not.
Believe it or not, all we can really do is ask them!
The first question should be something like: "Where ya from?" Hopefully, the goal will be finding out whether they're a citizen of the U.S. through birth or naturalization.
If that doesn’t work, try something like: "got any papers?" — to find out if they have legal status to remain in the country as either a green card-holder (lawful permanent resident) or as a non-immigrant on a valid visa.
The only benefit to this "citizen-chatting" is that average citizens like us don’t have to jump through hoops to start chatting with or subtly interrogating someone on the street (as police or immigration officers do).
So as long as the suspected illegal aliens or criminal alien residents will talk, see what you can find out!
It’s at least worth a try … and it’s certainly a step in the right direction to combat the immigration anarchy of 2006 America.
Juan Mann is an attorney and the proprietor of DeportAliens.com. He writes a weekly column for VDARE.com and contributes to Michelle Malkin’s Immigration BLOG.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.