Immigration’s Human Cost

By Tudey Teten
Staff Writer

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” Albert Einstein

On July 28, Dani Countryman, a fifteen-year-old Texas girl was visiting relatives near Portland, Oregon, when she was brutally assaulted and then strangled to death. DNA from the men arrested for her murder, attempted rape, and attempted sexual assault was found on Dani’s fingernails. Both suspects are illegal aliens; one had been convicted on two drunken driving charges nine months before Dani’s death.

A week later in Newark, New Jersey, four young Delaware State University students were lined up against an elementary school wall and shot in the head, execution-style. Miraculously, one survived. At least two charged with the killings are illegal aliens and one of them had already been arrested twice this year, the most serious charge being a 31-count indictment that included the rape of a five-year-old girl. When the murders occurred, he was free on a $150,000 bail bond.

Impersonal Statistics

If you think I’m a racist xenophobe, consider these numbers. To date, more than 3,700 American soldiers have been killed in the Iraq War. According to Mac Johnson, writing in Human Events, 12/5/2005, on average, six Americans are killed every day by illegal aliens. That equates to over 9,600 people murdered by immigrants illegally in the U.S. since the Iraq War began on March 19, 2003.

Think those figures are inflated? In the online magazine City Journal, Winter 2004 edition, Heather MacDonald wrote, “In Los Angeles, 95% of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.”

Google “MS-13 gang” and the first entry is a Newsweek article from March 2005 titled “The Most Dangerous Gang in America.” Then go to www.immigrationshumancost.org and read stories and view photos of a sampling of people killed by illegal aliens.

From the Time Magazine, 9/20/04, article "America's Border: Who Left the Door Open?": "The numbers suggest that tens of thousands of criminals, quite possibly hundreds of thousands, treat the southern border as a revolving door to crimes of opportunity. The situation is so out of control that of the 400,000 illegal aliens who have been ordered to be deported, 80,000 have criminal records - and the agency in charge, the Homeland Security Department, does not have a clue as to the whereabouts of any of them, criminal or non-criminal, including those from countries that support terrorism."

Two large samplings of captured illegals in 2003-04, in Texas and Arizona, revealed that 5% and 14%, respectively, were wanted in the United States on felony charges. The combined samplings totaled 1.1 million detainees. Assuming only one million slip into America illegally each year and we apply the more conservative percentage number, we add a criminal element slightly less than the population of Texarkana, Texas-Arkansas every twelve months, and in ten years will have absorbed enough non-naturalized criminals to populate another Oklahoma City. The purported number of illegals already in America is often cited as 12 million, and a portion of that 4% of our population commits over 11% of the murders reported to the FBI annually. Using the “criminal element” figure of 5% means there are at least 600,000 illegal felons already roaming our country.

Many politicians wave off the murders as insignificant anomalies, because if these 12 million future voters/illegal aliens inhabited one state, it would be the fifth largest in the U.S., behind only California, Texas, New York, and Florida. As Floridians know, adding a 4% voting block can change the outcome of an election.

Oregon is a “sanctuary state;” Los Angeles and Newark are “sanctuary cities,” locales where police are told to have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” mentality when confronting illegal criminals and aliens. According to 8 U.S. Code, sections 1324 and 1325; Immigration and Naturalization Act sections 274 and 275, those "concealing, harboring, or sheltering illegal aliens” run the risk of being charged with a felony. In Texas, Houston and Austin are “sanctuary cities.”

At the January 30, 1997, Austin City Council meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Gus Garcia made a motion, seconded by Councilmember Daryl Slusher that reads, in part:

“NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Austin City Council declares it to be the policy of the City of Austin that it will not discriminate or deny city services on the basis of a person’s immigration status, and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Austin City Council declares the City of Austin to be a “Safety Zone” where all persons are treated equally, with respect and dignity regardless of immigration status.”

The resolution passed, 7-0. A Faustian Deal if there ever was one.

Closer to home

Jenny Garcia Hayden graduated from Anderson High School in 2003 and enrolled at St. Edward’s University. On January 26, 2004, one month after her 18th birthday, David Diaz Morales, a 20-year old illegal who was already known to Austin police, savagely assaulted and stabbed Jenny to death in her bedroom at her family’s northwest Austin home. When her sisters, aged 13 and 15, discovered her body, the black-handled butcher knife was still in Jenny’s chest.

Statistics are impersonal numbers until someone you know becomes one, and then it becomes personal. Jenny’s mother was the first high school girl who ever asked me for a date.

Today, American consumers and businesses benefit from cheap illegal immigrant labor, while the families of Jenny, Dani, the Newark victims, and thousands more foot the bill for the rest of us. And pray you are never presented with a similar bill, because there is no sanctuary from grief for the families devastated by murders that should have been prevented.