Limited information

People commmenting on this blog and in general conversation make claims that they know who is illegal and who is not. In most cases such statements are without fact. The problem isn’t just limited to people interested in this topic. It involves others as well.

For example, when you look at a story in the news you might hazard a guess about the immigration status of the suspect in custody. Some folks will look at a Hispanic name and decide for themselves that he is illegal. Others would say the way to tell is a hyphenated Hispanic name, indicating the suspect still carried on the tradition of the old country.

Some people would look at the situation and simply say it is racist to even consider the immigration status. Why do we blame these undocumented people for all the crime? They are better citizens than citizens. And there are illegal aliens from England and Canada. It isn’t strictly a Hispanic problem.

Now, let’s look at the chain of information. First of all, the police department has to check for us to know if the suspect is here illegally.

Next, they have to release that information to the press.

Then the reporter needs to pick up on it and write about it.

Then the editor of the paper has to allow it to go into print.

See how fragile that chain is? Anywhere along the way that little bit of information can be lost.

Now, as a side note to all of this we should be aware that when we read the police blotter or police reports section in the newspaper it is an incorrect assumption to think you are looking at all the crime in town. Far from it.

It works like this: The newspaper assigns a reporter to cover the police department. Every day the reporter will walk into the police station and take a look at the list of arrests. There will be car accidents and traffic tickets and shoplifting and noise complaints and dozens of other items large and small.

What gets printed in the paper is all at the whim of the reporter, or perhaps guided by his boss. The paper might be focusing on teens and alcohol so the reporter will be keen on crimes involving drinking parties. Or they might be interested in hit-and-run car accidents.

Of course, violent crimes will get more attention. So will crimes involving family members of local notables.

My point is, you are not seeing all the crimes. The information is well-filtered. There is nothing nefarious about it; the newspaper has limited space for such things and the readers have limited interest in them.

County jails and other law enforcement agencies do keep information on line about who is incarcerated. There is a fair amount of information available in some cases. Here’s Kane County Jail’s roster: http://www.kanecountyjail.org/roster/roster_search.aspx
Note that they do not show immigration status about the inmates.

I’m not sure what would happen if I walked into the Elgin City Jail and asked to see the arrest log for the last 24 hours. I’m guessing I wouldn’t be allowed to see it. They would tell me to fill out a Freedom of Information request, wait seven days, and have a high probability of being denied. In one city jail in southern California I could. And the immigration status would be listed. But I think that is the exception of transparency.

Why do we even care? Because 30% of the foreign-born are illegal aliens. Make no mistake here, it is the role of government to know who is here illegally and do something about it. They have failed on both counts.

Such failure has led to false assumptions about the immigration status of all sorts of people. The greatest impact the city can have in the areas of discrimination and assimilation is to clean up this town. If we had trust that the city was in control of the situation we could go back to the way we were five years ago. We would assume that everyone living here was legal and that would be a non-issue.

The truth is that illegal aliens have been living here for 40 years. We had an active “Centro do Informacion” during the 1986 amnesty because we had illegal aliens here.

What has changed since 9/11 is that the public has come to realize how bad the situation has become. And we now know that the government has done nothing about it.

Someone has to ask the questions and take action. As much as Schock would like to think only the Feds can do it, that is incorrect. Doing nothing is not an option. It is the role of government to police this problem. Otherwise, people will think what they will. And too often they will be wrong.