Impact of immigration and crime in the United States

Immigration and crime in the United States seem to be shrouded in a fog of confusion, especially with regard to illegal immigration (largely from Mexico). Interestingly, if someone were in Mexico illegally, they would be considered a felon. While United States laws are cumbersome and unclear, Mexico's are crystal clear and enforced evenly and with no guilty consciences. In an era when legal scholars suggest that the United States should look to foreign legal precedents and laws in considering the structure of our legal system, no one is suggesting that we copy Mexico's immigration laws. For this reason, this author attacks the problem primarily from a law enforcement perspective. This clears up many of the misconceptions and shows the problems in an international, cross-border context. This also gives access to the best hard data on illegal immigration and crime in the United States.

It is precisely liberal immigration laws such as are in the United States that gives the ability for drug gangs to operate on both sides of the United States-Mexican border. This is the bottom line reason why illegal immigration represents a huge threat to American sovereignty. It is reflected in gangs that operate internationally and for whom illegal immigration is part of their business. Without such illegal immigrants, they would not have scouts and intelligence to work on the American. side of the border.

Essay Mapping

In this essay, the author will document how drug gangs that employ illegal aliens scout the U.S. southern border to commit their illegal acts. Secondly, they will document their relationship to illegal immigrant gangs who are their street soldiers in U.S. urban centers. Thirdly, it will be shown their extensive ties with Al-Qaeda and international terrorism.

Claim One:

International gangs that employ illegal aliens to scout out both sides of the borders for drug operations are becoming the rule in the Arizona border area. Before employing statistics from sources such as the FBI on this problem, the first thing a reader needs to know is an example in order to frame this problem exactly.

Two off-duty police officers near Nogales, Arizona made a large marijuana arrest. They received a threat after the arrest that a Mexican drug cartel will put them in its crosshairs if they conduct such arrests again. The threats come from the Sinaloa Cartel headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman-Loera (Rhett-Miller). Mexican drug cartels such as the Sinoloa Mexican have operate on American soil by maintaining lookout and reconnaissance bases in strategic areas in the hills of southern Arizona. From these hills their scouts monitor movements made by law enforcement officials (Houseley). Such gangs not only include the Sinoloa, but also the Gulf cartel are active in the drug trade to the United States The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reports that Mexican drug syndicates that currently operate along America's Southwest border are much more sophisticated and dangerous than organized criminal groups in previously in law enforcement history. These drug cartels, and the smuggling networks and gangs they employ have immense great control over routes into the United States. They represent a huge challenge to the Border Patrol and Department of Homeland Security to secure the Southwest border. The cartels operate with state of the art military type weapons. They have sophisticated technology and intelligence of a paramilitary nature. (Taylor).

Claim Two:

Such drug cartels as above employ gangs such as Surenos-13 and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) (ibid). While other gangs are also employed, the FBI has very good information on MS-13. Even though MS-13 is a Salvadoran, Central American and South American gang, it operates in Mexico and on the American side of the border in at least 42 states and the District of Columbia. The gang has about 6,000-10,000 members nationwide north of the border. It has a particularly heavy presence in urban areas such as Los Angeles ("FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation"). The vast majority of such gangs are illegal immigrants, underscoring the overwhelming impact of illegal immigration upon drug dealing but in other areas as well such as human trafficking (prostitution) and identity theft (Taylor). To put a price tag on the problem for reader, Indiana University economist Eric Rasmusen claims in figures from a 2005 GAO report on foreigners that were incarcerated in Federal and state prisons calculated that illegal immigrants commit 21% of crime in America. This cost America more than $84 billion (Kingsbury).

Claim Three:

Illegal immigration from Mexico is a major funnel for terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda. This is stated in the groups own words. In a 2009 video, an al Qaeda recruiter threatened to smuggle a biological weapon into the United States. He claimed that the organization would do this via tunnels under the Mexico border. The video aired on Al Jazeera and was later posted to several web sites. These show Kuwaiti dissident Abdullah al-Nafisi telling supporters in Bahrain that terrorists in al Qaeda were observing the U.S. border with Mexico to figure out how to send terrorists and their weapons onto American soil ("Washington Times"). This is old news. An Al-Qaeda operative was arrested in Texas near the Mexican border in 2005 and handed over to Federal law enforcement officials ("News Max.com").

Conclusion