Next, we hear a lot from VDARE.com readers who have
followed up on reporting illegal aliens and criminal
alien residents and who have realized that nothing has
happened. Often, the federal immigration bureaucracy
apparently couldn’t care less about these reports.
(But it’s still worth doing. The bureaucracy has to
start a file for each report—and they know that, come
the Revolution, or a Tancredo Presidency, those files
might come back to haunt them.)
A
VDARE.com reader tells the tale of not only falling
victim to Hurricane Katrina, but also being saddled with
uninvited illegal aliens as part of the
aftermath of the storm:
Date: 4/10/06
Subject: Reporting Doesn't Work
"I just wanted to let
people know that reporting illegal aliens does no good
unless they
[the illegal aliens]
are on the fugitive list. We have been dealing with an
El Salvadoran who lives in a tent on some property
near ours. We met him when he found my husband's lost
wallet. At first, he kept coming around wanting a ride
to
Walmart to buy phone cards. Then he started eating
at our house (almost every day). Lately, he has shown up
at our front door as early as 5:00 AM wanting me to put
his cell phone on the charger.
"He goes almost every
morning to
Home Depot, where he waits with a
hundred or so other Latinos for someone to pick him
up for work. He works almost every day. He sent a total
of $7,000 back to El Salvador for a "
coyote"
to smuggle his wife into the country. Then, he
apparently got the idea that we could
rent him our FEMA trailer since we had our new home
set up now. He speaks no English and we understand very
little Spanish, but we tried to make him understand that
we couldn't do that. His wife was supposed to arrive
last Monday and didn't show up. He found out yesterday
that she had been
detained by immigration in Texas.
"The [DHS/ICE] agent
called and I talked to him last night. He said all
[the
illegal alien] has to do is go to the Greyhound bus
station and buy a ticket from Kingsville, TX, to
Gulfport, MS, and they are sending her here to meet him.
When we found out he had sent for her, we reported him
to immigration (the local
border patrol office and the ICE office). We were
told that they don't have anywhere to keep them and that
even if he was picked up, he would be processed and
released to await an appearance before an
[EOIR] immigration judge.
"Of course, if he
doesn't appear, then they just wait until (if) he ever
gets picked up again, then they will deport him. Don't
get me wrong, he's a very nice guy, but we lost
everything to Hurricane Katrina and now it looks like
we're going to have two people who don't speak English
spending a lot of time at our house. I just thought I
would let you know that the system doesn't work AT ALL!"
4/13/06 –
"As an update, the wife arrived yesterday."
Another VDARE.com reader testifies to the havoc caused
by illegal alien
drunk drivers, and what citizens can do to report
these immigration law-breakers. Fortunately, no one was
injured or killed this time around.
"About two weeks ago, a car that my wife and I had
bought two days prior was totaled by a
drunk, unlicensed driver with no insurance and bogus
plates on the car. Thankfully, the car was parked in
front of our apartment at the time and no one was
injured.
"I have serious
doubts about the driver and the driver's family's
immigration status. As such, I feel that trying to sue
then or even take them to small claims court seems
useless, as people who are living completely
under the radar with no respect for the laws and
procedures of this country are unlikely to have
bank accounts, reportable/sizeable assets, etc.
"How would you
advise that I go about trying to determine the
immigration status of this family and seeing that they
are no longer allowed to live without any regard for the
responsibilities of living in the United States?
Unfortunately, as
ordinary American citizens, we have no sure-fire way of
finding out whether someone in particular is in the
country illegally or not.
Believe it or not, all
we can really do is ask them!
The first question
should be something like: "Where ya from?"
Hopefully, the goal will be finding out whether they're
a citizen of the U.S. through birth or naturalization.
If that doesn’t work,
try something like:
"got any papers?" – to find out if they have
legal status to remain in the country as either a
green card-holder (lawful permanent resident) or as
a non-immigrant on a valid visa.
The only benefit to
this "citizen-chatting" is that average citizens
like us don't have to jump through hoops to start
chatting with or subtly interrogating someone on the
street (as
police or
immigration officers do).
So as long as the
suspected illegal aliens or criminal alien residents
will talk, see what you can find out!
It’s at least worth a
try . . . and it’s certainly a step in the right
direction to combat the
immigration anarchy of 2006 America.
Juan Mann [email
him] is an attorney and the proprietor of
DeportAliens.com.
He writes a weekly column for
VDARE.com and
contributes to Michelle Malkin’s
Immigration BLOG.
