Recent attacks on immigrants tell us who we are
By Yolanda Chávez Leyva, July 8, 2009
We need to speak out against the ugliness that is fueling anti-immigrant violence and taking lives.
The most recent example of how far some anti-immigrant people have gone is the home invasion-murder of Raul Flores and his 9-year old daughter, Brisenia, in Arizona on May 30.
Two of the three people charged with the murders have connections with an anti-immigrant group.
Shawna Forde actually founded the Minutemen American Defense (MAD) after being ousted by the more well-known Minutemen Civil Defense Corps. Her organization’s website issued a statement that said, “Shawna acted totally on her own personal agenda and has caused a lot of pain, embarrassment, and humiliation to the total Minuteman movement and fellow members of MAD.”
The continuing anti-immigrant rhetoric, fueled by politicians, vigilantes, and political pundits, has created an atmosphere where killing immigrants is acceptable.
Take, for example, the death of 25-year-old Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pa., last July. Ramirez, an undocumented worker from Mexico and father of two, was brutally beaten by white teenagers, eventually dying from a kick to the head. At least one of the teenagers had used a racial epithet against Ramirez. Nevertheless, a jury refused to convict the teenagers of murder, bringing in a conviction only on the charge of simple assault.
Last year, another group of teenagers murdered Ecuadoran immigrant Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue, N.Y. The teens reportedly said that they were looking to “beat up some Mexicans.”
The Shawna Forde case you might be able to write off as the action of a crazed vigilante. But these teenagers?
Many of them are high school athletes, earn good grades and are popular. They don’t seem like monsters.
But their actions are monstrous, and they make me fear for the future of this nation.
What kind of nation are we that permits fear to rule?
What kind of nation are we that can treat other human beings as less than human, expendable and not worthy of justice?
What kind of nation are we that allows our youth to stalk and kill others for being “different"?
What kind of nation are we that turns away at the sight of the countless insults, injuries, racial epithets, and other daily inhumanities faced by immigrants in this country?
It’s time that we take the anti-immigrant rhetoric and its fear-mongering leaders for what they are — not protectors of this nation but destroyers.
It’s time we demand justice for the murdered and insist that our politicians make real, relevant changes to improve our lives.
It’s time we stop blaming immigrants for the ills of our economy and our nation and look instead at what big business and government are doing to create the problems that plague us.
It’s time we look in the mirror and decide who we want to be, and what we want America to be.
I hope we choose to be moral individuals and a caring nation, not cruel people of a callous country.
Yolanda Chávez Leyva is an historian specializing in Mexican-American and border histories. Her research is on children crossing the border at the turn of the 20th century. She can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.
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Though no federal statistics are kept on murders or any other crimes committed by illegal aliens, a number of groups have produced estimates based on data collected from prisons, news reports and independent research.
Twelve Americans are murdered every day by illegal aliens. This translates to 4,380 Americans murdered annually by illegal aliens. That's 21,900 since Sept. 11, 2001.
But the carnage wrought by illegal alien murderers represents only a fraction of the pool of blood spilled by American citizens as a result of an open border and un-enforced immigration laws.
While 12 Americans are murdered daily by illegal aliens, 13 are killed by drunk illegal alien drivers –for another annual death toll of 4,745. That's 23,725 since Sept. 11, 2001.
While no one – in or out of government – tracks all U.S. accidents caused by illegal aliens, the statistical and anecdotal evidence suggests many of last year's 42,636 road deaths involved illegal aliens.
A report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Study found 20 percent of fatal accidents involve at least one driver who lacks a valid license. In California, another study showed that those who have never held a valid license are about five times more likely to be involved in a fatal road accident than licensed drivers.
Statistically, that makes them an even greater danger on the road than drivers whose licenses have been suspended or revoked – and nearly as dangerous as drunk drivers.
As many as eight American children are victims of sexual abuse by illegal aliens every day – a total of 2,920 annually.
Based on a one-year in-depth study, Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute of Atlanta estimates there are about 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States who have had an average of four victims each. She analyzed 1,500 cases from January 1999 through April 2006 that included serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides and child molestation committed by illegal immigrants.
As the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. increases, so does the number of American victims.
According to Edwin Rubenstien, president of ESR Research Economic Consultants, in Indianapolis in 1980, federal and state correctional facilities held fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. But at the end of 2003, approximately 267,000 illegal aliens were incarcerated in all U.S. jails and prisons.
While the federal government doesn't track illegal alien murders, illegal alien rapes or illegal alien drunk driving deaths, it has studied illegal aliens incarcerated in U.S. prisons.
In April 2005, the Government Accountability Office released a report on a study of 55,322 illegal aliens incarcerated in federal, state, and local facilities during 2003. It found the following:
The 55,322 illegal aliens studied represented a total of 459,614 arrests – some eight arrests per illegal alien;
Their arrests represented a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses – some 13 offenses per illegal alien;
36 percent had been arrested at least five times before.
"While the vast majority of illegal aliens are decent people who work hard and are only trying to make a better life for themselves and their families, (something you or I would probably do if we were in their place), it is also a fact that a disproportionately high percentage of illegal aliens are criminals and sexual predators," states Peter Wagner, author of a new report called "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration." "That is part of the dark side of illegal immigration and when we allow the 'good' in we get the 'bad' along with them. The question is, how much 'bad' is acceptable and at what price?"