This is an update of a story we posted here, here, and here in August.
Skipping through the horror stories and dreadful photos to soften you up toward Mexican illegal aliens, here are some of the important bits of the article in the New York Daily News (hat tip: Ed).
We do have a heart—this situation is horrific for those caught in the trap of Mexican drug cartels.
But, the bottomline is that asylum protection was never intended to protect people from crimes that their own government should be protecting them from. Can you imagine how much worse our border would become (yes it could be worse!) if fleeing from drug cartels (or other such criminal activity) became a legitimate reason to grant asylum in the US.
Six paragraphs after the opening horror story we learn (emphasis mine):
According to U.S. Department of Homeland Security figures, more than 23,000 Mexicans sought political asylum in the first nine months of this year, quadruple the number of requests made in 2009. The spiraling number of pleas for entry is driven by the exponential growth of cartel terrorism against everyday villagers and townspeople, say immigrants and human rights groups.
Another horror story then this:
More than 90 percent of Mexican asylum requests are denied by immigration judges who must adhere to a strict legal standard in a process that may drag out for months and years. Applicants must show “credible fear” of persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality or membership in a social group.
A pitch to fix our “dysfunctional immigration system?” Are we to find a way to bring this group of aliens to the US? To create some new category of protection? Is that what Nunez is saying? Or, has the New York Daily News reporter used Nunez’s words to imply that is what we should conclude?
Despite the extremely low percentage of approved asylum petitions, the issue has nonetheless become part of America’s divisive political discord on immigration issues.
“It’s another symptom of the dysfunctional immigration system we have,” said Peter Nunez, a former U.S. Attorney in San Diego and a high-ranking member of the Treasury Department under President George H.W. Bush.
“These people don’t have a legitimate claim,” he told The News. “They’re not being persecuted by their government. They should seek the help of authorities for public safety claims.”
What about claims that the government and law enforcement are corrupted by powerful, billion-dollar cartels?
“That doesn’t qualify them for refugee status,” Nunez said. “It’s not the American government’s role to do what the Mexican government cannot do.”
These reportedly high detention figures need to be investigated (especially as they are being quoted by Soros’s/Norquist’s pal Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum. I’m guessing the largest numbers are because the aliens have been determined to be a safety risk or are on their way to deportation.
After requesting asylum, most Mexicans are locked up in federal detention centers, where they wait for a court hearing in the backlogged system.
Some are held because they have criminal backgrounds ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. Others have no one to vouch for them in the U.S., and so remain in custody.
On any given day, there are 31,800 detainees in more than 257 federal centers across the country, held for a variety of immigration issues, according to recent figures from the National Immigration Forum, a Washington-based nonprofit group.
Funny that the NY Daily News doesn’t mention that Nunez is chairman of the board at the Center for Immigration Studies, a leading immigration control group, and is thus on our side of the great divide.