Originally posted at the Washington Examiner

The politics of fear and prejudice are front and center. Conservative politicians and talk show hosts cannot seem to get enough of it.

Two unrelated, random crimes on opposite sides of the country are the genesis of the latest wave of immigrant-bashing — a gangland-style execution of three college students in Newark, N.J., and the slaying of a 15-year-old girl in Oregon.

One of the suspects in the Newark case is an undocumented resident from Peru who was out on bail on a serious felony charge at the time of the crime. Both suspects in the Oregon case are noncitizens, one of whom has a DUI conviction and the other a clear record. The two cases are fueling unwarranted hysteria against immigrants.

There is no immigrant crime wave in the United States. Statistics prove it. In June, as it does every year, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released its “Report on the Number of Prison and Jail Inmates.”

As of June 2006, there were more than 2.25 million federal and state inmates. Just 4 percent — fewer than 100,000 — were noncitizens, a group that includes both those here legally and those here without proper documentation. While there were 331 more noncitizen inmates in 2006 than 2005, that number was still 700 less than in 2004.

In 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, young foreign-born men were five times less likely to be incarcerated than those born in the U.S, accounting for only 4 percent of the prison population.

While our immigrant population has increased in the past decade, the crime rate has dropped dramatically, both for violent crimes and property crimes.

There is no correlation between where one is born and his or her propensity to commit a crime. Crime is the result of myriad conditions, from poverty to drug and alcohol abuse to a variety of other factors. Immigration is not one of them.

We have effective laws for the removal of noncitizens who are convicted of crime. Since 1996, the list of “aggravated felonies” mandating deportation has steadily grown. When a person subject to deportation is charged with a crime, the law allows for the placing of a detainer on that person so that when released from state or federal custody, whether on bail or following conviction, he or she is transported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody for continued detention or to face deportation proceedings, rather than be released into the community.

Sometimes, people fall through the cracks. It may have happened in Newark and Oregon. That doesn’t mean we need different laws. It means we need to enforce the ones we have. We don’t need a “one strike, you’re out” or a no-bail policy for immigrants.

Politicians will do anything to get elected, as demonstrated by their recent and nonstop hue and cry against “sanctuary cities” and “illegal immigration.” In their demagoguery, they encourage fear, prejudice and bigotry. In their attempts to be viewed as tough on illegal immigration, they foster inaccurate stereotypes.

The vast majority of immigrants in this country, whether present with or without proper papers, are hardworking, law-abiding people with strong family ties. They are little different from the immigrants of 100 years ago. They are not stealing our jobs or draining scant public resources. They pay taxes and help make our country a better place for all of us.

Most immigrants enter the country legally. According to the INS Statistical Yearbook, 75 percent of immigrants have legal, permanent visas. Of the 25 percent who are undocumented, 40 percent overstayed temporary visas, meaning their initial entry into the country was legal.

Immigration does not breed crime. Our prisons are not overflowing because of crimes by the undocumented. They are overflowing because of our failed criminal justice policies and over reliance on incarceration versus treatment and rehabilitation with respect to our nonviolent homegrown offenders. [More]

The ACLU scored a big victory for all of us today. A federal judge in New York found the Patriot Act provision pertaining to national security letters -- specifically, the part that gagged recipients of the letter -- unconstitutional.

A federal court today struck down the amended Patriot Act’s National Security Letter (NSL) provision. The law has permitted the FBI to issue NSLs demanding private information about people within the United States without court approval, and to gag those who receive NSLs from discussing them. The court found that the gag power was unconstitutional and that because the statute prevented courts from engaging in meaningful judicial review of gags, it violated the First Amendment and the principle of separation of powers.

More...

A federal judge in California issued a nationwide restraining order yesterday against Bush's plan to send "no match" letters to employers that would require them to fire workers whose social security numbers on their W-2 form didn't match the number in the Social Security database, or face big fines and penalties, within 90 days of receiving the letter.

The suit was brought by the AFL-CIO, in response to an August 10 rule announced by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

The unions argued that past experience with no-match letters shows that they are often sent mistakenly because of clerical errors by employers or the government in recording numbers, or because of name changes after a marriage, divorce or other innocent reasons.

The AFL-CIO also said Social Security was never intended to be a means of tracking down illegal immigrants, and is so cumbersome that legal employees will be unable to clear up discrepancies in 90 days.

More....

In 2004, Bush proclaimed himself to be a "compassionate conservative." Where's the compassion here?

Jacqueline Coats' husband drowned after he dove into a fierce Pacific Ocean riptide to rescue two boys. Now the immigrant from Kenya might be forced to leave the United States because he died before filing her residency application.

She is among more than 80 foreign-born widows across the nation who face possible deportation because their husbands died before immigration paperwork was approved.

A class-action suit for the women was filed yesterday. I hope they prevail. Also check out the website, Suriving Spouses Against Deportation.

I have an op-ed in today's Washington Examiner newspaper reproduced here...There is No Immigrant Crime Wave.

Politicians will do anything to get elected, including using random, unrelated high-profile crimes to mislead the public, generating fear and hysteria.

Using government statistics that show just 4% of our 2.25 million federal and state inmate population are non-citizens and that young foreign-born men are five times less likely to be incarcerated than those born in the U.S, I argue:

Immigration does not breed crime. Our prisons are not overflowing because of crimes by the undocumented. They are overflowing because of our failed criminal justice policies and over reliance on incarceration versus treatment and rehabilitation with respect to our nonviolent homegrown offenders.

There is nothing wrong with having a debate about immigration. But it is deplorable to falsely stereotype and malign millions of law-abiding people because of one’s desire for a particular outcome in that debate.

Hope you'll read the whole thing. It will make the xenophobic anti-immgrants out there see red.

A federal court in 1992 ordered the NYPD to stop arresting homeless panhandlers for violating an unconstitutional ordinance that prohibited loitering “for the purpose of begging.” As TalkLeft noted here, the order didn't stop the arrests. Neither, apparently, did a threat to hold NYPD in contempt of court.

Judge Shira Scheindlin's latest response may be more successful in getting the city's attention: she's certified a class action lawsuit, permitting a class of homeless people to sue the city for violating their civil rights by continuing to enforce the ordinance.

Judge Scheindlin said the suit seeks more than what the police had so far agreed to do, such as the dismissal of fines and the expunging of wrongful convictions from public records. Class certification is the only way to ensure equitable relief and to prevent future enforcement of the unconstitutional law, Judge Scheindlin said.

Our unitary executive is at it again. Even though Congress refused to pass comprehensive immigration reform, he's taken it upon himself to issue new regulations that will crack down on immigrants, toughen border enforcement and increase the use of felony charges against those in violation.

At a news conference in Washington yesterday, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, and Carlos M. Gutierrez, the secretary of commerce, formally unveiled the measures, which had been disclosed in general terms earlier, to reinforce border security and drive illegal immigrants out of the labor force.

....Mr. Chertoff said the “real hammer” would be more frequent use by the immigration authorities of criminal felony charges against employers and illegal immigrant workers. He said the authorities had made 742 criminal arrests so far this year in illegal employment cases, compared with 716 such arrests in all of last year, which was a record.

If you had any doubt this is a payback, consider this:

Paying religious conservatives to surf for p!rn is not a wise use of the nation's tax dollars.

A Pennsylvania judge has declared unconstitutional the Hazleton law banning the undocumented from living or working within city limits.

The decision, by Judge James M. Munley of Federal District Court, presents a new roadblock to local officials who want to take action against illegal immigration after broad federal legislation to address the issue failed in the Senate last month.

Judge Munley ruled that ordinances first passed last July by the Hazleton City Council interfered with federal law, which regulates immigration, and violated the due process rights of employers, landlords and illegal immigrants.

Many cities since either adopted the Hazleton law or declared their intention to do if it was upheld.

The judge emphasized that illegal immigrants had the same civil rights as legal immigrants and citizens.

“Hazleton, in its zeal to control the presence of a group deemed undesirable, violated the rights of such people, as well as others within the community,” he wrote.

The ACLU weighs in here.

More like this please.

Today's stupid question comes from Sen. Tom Coburn, who asks:

"Why is it wrong to shoot the [drug trafficker] after he's been told to stop?"

At least two answers come readily to mind. First, the fleeing suspect is only a suspect, having not been tried or convicted. Second, even if the suspected trafficker is guilty, death isn't the appropriate penalty for smuggling marijuana. We don't leave it up to the police (or Sen. Coburn) to assume the role of jury and executioner.

Here's a third answer:

Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said the Supreme Court has ruled that using deadly force in that way is illegal.

A little technicality like the law doesn't trouble Coburn, who remains confounded by the thought that Border Patrol agents were convicted for shooting an unarmed man and then covering up their misconduct. In the strange world of the GOP, as we learned in the Scooter Libby case, cover-ups deserve no punishment. Neither, apparently, does shooting at unarmed Mexicans.

Tom Tancredo is in need of an attention fix for his fledgling Presidential campaign that while never getting off the ground still took a nose-dive when immigration reform fell off the table.

His latest is to introduce a bill that he knows will not pass but hopes will push emotional buttons back into overdrive.

Everybody knows that if you are born in this country, you automatically are a U.S. citizen. Under Tancredo's bill, a baby born to undocumented residents would be stripped of citizenship.

Tancredo's legal foundation for this is his unique view of the 14th Amendment. How unique?

Tancredo doesn't have any co-sponsors for his bill. Asked what support he expected, Tancredo, standing alone on a podium, looked to the right and the left and noted the absence of fellow lawmakers.

More...

I agree with Jane and John Amato of Crooks and Liars: The Republicans blocked the immigration reform bill and voters will remember that when its time to go to the polls.

I wasn't happy with the bill because it was too onerous on the path to legalization and too disrespectful of principles of family reunification.

Yet, there's no doubt that Republican xenophobes killed immigration with their false insistence that it was an amnesty bill. And voters are likely to make them pay. Republicans are the biggest losers in the debate:

Hispanics represent the fastest-growing chunk of the American electorate. Their choices help drive the rising swing states of presidential politics: Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico.