July 3, 2008

Send 'em home?

The best thing about the flap over San Francisco's program -- now ended -- to fly juvenile illegal immigrants home after they were arrested for drug crimes is that it exposes the contradictions in the right's indignation over the cost of housing illegal immigrants in our jails and prisons. I get a lot of email from anti-immigration folks saying we should just ship those criminals back to their home countries to deal with them. But the San Francisco affair shows the the hole in that logic. First, it costs money to send them home. And second, once they're home, there is nothing to stop them from coming back again. It's a policy that treats a criminal who is an illegal immigrant better than one who is a citizen. Makes no sense. From either the left or the right.

Posted by dweintraub on July 3, 2008 8:12 AM