On Immigrant Crime and Human Tragedy

We have been following the response to the recent tragedy in Los Angeles about a death allegedly caused by an alleged unddocumented immigrant.  Now, a car accident in Iowa has had similar repercussions.  The L.A. Times reports that in Marshalltown, Iowa, where a quarter of residents are Latino, is seeing rising anti-immigrant sentiments after a deadly car crash involving an allegedly undocumented woman.

Unfortunately, human life is filled with too much tragedy.  Some immigrants, less than the national average according to some studies, commit crimes.  For all suspects, there is a process for determining guilt and punishment.  We should resist anti-immigrant — which often translates into anti-Latina/o — sentiment and “deport them all”/”seal the borders” types of solutions to the problem of “criminal aliens.”  However, by now, it should be abundantly clear tha the United States cannot realistically expect to deport 12 million undocumented immigrants and, despite spending billions of dollars and the loss of thousands of lives, have failed to seal the borders.

KJ