In an opinion piece for The Guardian this morning Mehdi Hasan argues that it is inaccurate and just plain wrong to call undocumented people “illegal” criminals.
Hasan makes three points:
·
There is
no such thing as an illegal immigrant
·
Being an
undocumented immigrant is not a crime
·
Higher immigration
does not lead to higher crime
In response to a
question about how many of the 3,500 people arrested by ICE were criminals,
White House secretary Karoline Leavitt answered “All of them, because they illegally broke our nation’s laws, and,
therefore, they are criminals, as far as this administration goes.”
“Leavitt’s answer
delighted Maga media and went viral in conservative circles", Hasan wrote. “It
was also completely, utterly, totally, wrong. Factually inaccurate. A brazen
lie.”
First, people cannot be
illegal. They may commit illegal acts but they themselves can not be illegal.
Elie Wiesel, an Auschwitz survivor and winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize,
once said:
“know that no human being is illegal. That is
a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they
can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human
being be illegal?”
Second, American law states
that illegal entry is a misdemeanor not a felony and is subject to civil, not
criminal, penalties. So being present in the United States without proper
documentation is not a crime and does not make anyone a criminal. A 2012 Supreme
Court ruling, Arizona v United States, confirmed “as a general rule, it is not a crime for a removable alien to remain in
the United States.”
Reentry of removed
aliens however is a felony (so is falsification of business records in New York
of which Donald Trump was convicted on 34 counts, making him a criminal).
If an immigrant has been forced to leave the United States and then comes back
in, they have committed a crime and, if caught and convicted, could be
accurately called a criminal.
Nearly half of
undocumented immigrants in the United States did not enter the country
illegally – they entered legally then overstayed their visa.
Third the American Right is trying very hard to equate immigrants with crime in the minds of American voters. They repeatedly use rhetoric like “criminal alien murderers, rapists, child predators and gangsters” when referring to undocumented immigrants. That too doesn’t’ hold up to the facts. Study after study supports the truth that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans. I saw a meme that said “More American women have been sexually assaulted by the president and his cabinet than by immigrants”. That may be an exaggeration but the principle is sound.
As immigration expert
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick observed: “you’re
measurably safer living in a town filled with average undocumented immigrants
than a town filled with average native-born citizens.”
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