EDITORIALS

Your tired, your poor, but not your criminals

August 23, 2007

Anti-immigration sentiment has been inflamed by the heinous, execution-style shootings of four young people in a Newark schoolyard earlier this month. Among those charged were an illegal immigrant from Peru and a legal alien from Nicaragua.

It is tempting to use this horrific crime to push immigration policy in an extreme direction. A similar incident in Hazleton, Pa., in which two illegal immigrants were charged in a 2006 shooting death, resulted in a tough anti-illegal immigration law that was later ruled unconstitutional.

What these cases should do, however, is focus our attention on the problem of how we deal with immigrants, legal and illegal, who commit serious crimes in this country.

We should recognize that most immigrants are here for the economic opportunities and not to engage in violent criminal activity. Studies have shown that, overall, immigrants are less likely to land in jail than native-born Americans. Nicholas Montalto, chairman of the board of directors of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, pointed out that for men ages 18 to 39, the incarceration rate is 3.51 percent among native-born Americans and 0.86 percent for immigrants. And undocumented im migrants appear to be no different than documented immi grants where it concerns rates of criminality, he said.

Addressing the problem seems to be straightforward: When an immigrant commits a serious crime, he or she should be punished and/or deported. But it turns out that it's not that simple, as the Newark schoolyard case illustrates.

First, there is no clear set of guidelines that tell local authorities when they should share criminal information with federal immigration officials. In the case of José Lachira Carranza, the Peruvian national accused in the Newark schoolyard shootings, neither police nor county officials nor the courts notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of Carranza's arrest 10 months earlier in a bloody barroom fight or of his indictment last month for sexually assaulting a young girl and threatening to kill her family.

Second, when ICE does learn of criminal activity, it often does not have the resources to take action. A report last year by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General projected that 302,500 immigrants will be jailed in county and state lockups this year. Most will go free rather than face deportation, even if they have been convicted of a crime, the auditors found.

The scenario points to an overwhelmed and disjointed immigration system that is sorely in need of reform and leadership. We are not talking about locking up and deporting millions of undocumented aliens who are living in the U.S. We are talking about not making the country a haven for foreign nationals who commit serious and violent crimes. If we are serious about keeping the criminal element out, we should commit the effort and money needed to do the job.