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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Illegal-Alien Immunity [Mark Krikorian]

Everyone's familiar with the concept of diplomatic immunity, wherein representatives of foreign countries are exempt from the nation's laws.

Now we have the developing concept of what you might call "illegal-alien immunity," which exempts unauthorized immigrants from a wide variety of laws. My colleague Ron Mortensen writes about it in the context of an illegal alien in Georgia arrested for, among other things, driving without a license. Boston troublemaker Michael Graham writes with relish today about an illegal alien who crashed into a pro-illegal-immigration state legislator, was arrested for drunk driving etc., and simply laughed at the police, saying he would just go "back to my home country, Mexico" — a likely prospect, since Massachusetts judges can't take legal status into account when making bail decisions.

We've seen this same illegal-alien immunity in many other areas. Identity fraud, for instance: Illegal aliens who file with the IRS for refunds suffer no penalty for submitting W-2s with fake information, as an American would, so long as they include the authentic illegal-alien taxpayer ID number given them by the IRS.

In California, some cities have stopped impounding the cars of unlicensed drivers because "too many" of the offenders were illegal aliens. In many communities, occupancy rules limiting the number of unrelated adults sharing the same dwelling are not enforced against illegal aliens.

In effect, the concept of illegal-alien immunity builds on sanctuary cities, which shield illegals from federal immigration law, to assert a similar exemption from other federal, state, and local laws. Would that advocates for illegal immigration were honest enough to formally claim the legal concept of illegal-alien immunity, so we could openly debate it, as we debated Clinton's shameless assertion of "protective privilege" to prevent Secret Service agents from testifying about his escapades. Instead, they continue to advance illegal-alien immunity surreptitiously, hoping to create a fait accompli to which they can apply a label later.

05/25 03:23 PM

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