Street Roots • April 14-20, 2017
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Being in the United States
unlawfully is a crime.
Not necessarily. Being here unlawfully - such has having
expired documents - isn’t a felony, or even a
misdemeanor. It’s considered a civil violation, punishable
by deportation and possibly a re-entry gap. It’s tantamount
to getting a parking ticket, according to Iliya Shapira with
the Cato Institute, who told Politifact, “You don’t go to jail
or receive any other criminal punishment for being in the
country illegally - you get deported.” According to
FindLaw, simply being unlawfully present is not grounds
for incarceration or criminal charges. And even entering
the country illegally is merely a misdemeanor under
federal criminal law.
Demonstrators at the Oregonians fo r Im m igration Reform event in Salem, A pril 8.
PR O TEST, fro m p ag e 4
hiding behind environmental values.” For example, she
said, its argument that Oregon has “unsustainable levels
of immigration.”
“The newly-formed Environmental Committee,” said
Joel Iboa in the hours leading up to the demonstration,
“is stepping forward. They are allies turning into
accomplices.”
Iboa works for Causa, Oregon’s largest immigrant
rights advocacy group, and is also the One Oregon
coalition coordinator. He said organizers also put the
call out for faith-based organizations and racial justice
groups to attend the protest at the Best Western.
Best Western did not respond to an inquiry about its
policies regarding hosting hate groups by press time.
Armed guards in uniforms, who were not local law
enforcement, stood at the door and in the lobby of the
Salem Best Western. The front desk told Street Roots
they were hotel night security called in due to the
protesters, but that does not explain why one was
wearing a hat that read “Patriot.” The guards also
popped in and out of the Oregonians for Immigration
Reform meeting, and were present in the lobby long
after the protesters left the area.
Vaughan had been invited to speak to Oregonians for
Immigration Reform about sanctuary policies and
Trump’s immigration policies.
She told a hotel conference room full of what
appeared to be mainly retirees, that several people now
working in the White House have been working with
her organization for years, and that they are successfully
pushing anti-immigrant policies.
She spoke about several bills she said were in the
works in Washington, D.C., that would limit refugees to
50,000 per year, severely limit family sponsorship of
immigration and cut back on who can earn green cards.
When she mentioned a bill that would make E-Verify, an
online system for verifying legal ability to work in the
U.S., universal, the room erupted in applause.
Vaughan spoke at length at the Best Western about
how her group and allies in D.C. are pushing back on
sanctuary cities.
In December she co-authored a report that aimed to
show how claims sanctuary jurisdictions make are
“largely unfounded.”
One key finding, stated the report, was that,
“Cooperation with immigration enforcement has not
P H O T O B Y JO E G L O D E
been shown to undermine community trust nor cause
immigrants to refrain from reporting crime.
We asked local law enforcement if this finding aligned
with the experience of their departments.
Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Lt.
Chad Gaidos indicated this argument couldn’t be further
from the truth.
“Since November, Sheriff Reese and his command
staff have attended numerous community meetings
where immigrants have personally expressed a
reluctance to call law enforcement to report crime for
fear of deportation,” he told Street Roots. “In addition,
presiding court judges in both Multnomah and
Washington counties have expressed seeing a decline in
the number of people who are participating in court
processes, to include both victims and witnesses. This
hampers the effectiveness of our court to provide due
process, and accountability,” he said. “Not reporting
crime in our community makes us all less safe.”
Portland Police Bureau spokesperson Sgt. Pete
Simpson did not agree with this finding either.
“We know that many of our immigrant and refugee
community members come from places where there is a
deep-rooted distrust of law enforcement. We work very
hard to help gain their trust through outreach and
community engagement,” he said. “Part of that is
explaining that local law enforcement is not immigration
enforcement.”
According to Center for New Community, a Chicago-
based organization that tracks “organized bigotry,”
nativists across the country have shown increasing
interest in Oregon and efforts to pass anti-immigrant
laws in the state, in part due to the low barrier to
qualify for a ballot measure.
A report it released on Oregonians for Immigration
Reform highlighted the group’s links to hate groups and
its dependence on financial assistance from white
nationalists.
The report states, “Nativist victories in Oregon can
be used to build momentum for the anti-immigrant
movement around the country.”
And it is.
Vaughan told her Oregon audience that she often
encourages immigration reform groups in other states
by telling them about how in Oregon, Oregonians for
Immigration Reform beat a measure to give drivers
licenses to undocumented immigrants.
“If it can be done in Oregon,” she said, “it can be
Undocumented or illegal
immigrants don't pay into the
system with taxes and are a
drain on social services.
The National Academy of Sciences has studied this at
length, and found that, like for all people, the impact is
based on a long list of variables, including age. The
NAS found that, “in fact, most immigrants tend to
arrive at young working ages, which partly explains
why the net fiscal impact of immigration is positive
under most scenarios.
For example, under one set of plausible assumptions,
the net present value of the fiscal impact of an
immigrant with less than a high school education is
-$13,000; in contrast, the net present value for an
immigrant with more than a high school education is
+$198,000,” according to the NAS.
And yes, even illegal immigrants pay taxes at the
federal, state and local level, even though they are not
eligible for many of those benefits, such as Social
Security.
Illegal immigrant populations
are havens for terrorists.
According to The Cato Institute, the chance of an
American being murdered in a terrorist attack
caused by a refugee is 1 in 3.64 billion per year
while the chance of being murdered in an attack
committed by an illegal immigrant is an astronomical
1 in 10.9 billion per year. By contrast, the chance of
being murdered by a tourist on a B visa, the most
common tourist visa, is 1 in 3.9 million per year.
“Only 10 illegal immigrants became terrorists, a
minuscule 0.000038 percent of the 26.5 million who
entered from 1975 through 2015. Only one of those
illegal immigrants, Ahmed Ajaj, actually succeeded
in killing an American as one of the 1993 World
Trade Center conspirators. Meanwhile, as is often
pointed out, Dylann Roof, the white supremicist
who murdered nine people simply because they
were black, wasn’t charged with terrorism.