by John Cane

Created on: November 17, 2010   Last Updated: November 18, 2010

In the US there is a long standing tradition of selectively enforcing our laws.  Sometimes a law is just not worth enforcing, and sometimes it is out-dated.  For example most drivers will tell you that it is okay to drive 5 MPH above the speed limit, and most officers won't mess with pulling you over unless you are 10 or more MPH above the speed limit.  Of course when you are pulled over you pay the full fine even though the first 5 shouldn't really count.

So with immigration, we have to decide which laws we want to enforce and which ones are not worthwhile.   My problem is that I don't view sneaking into our country without permission to be here as a minor crime.  Not only is it a major crime,  it leads by definition to a series of other crimes like Tax evasion, identity theft, driving cars without insurance or registration etc. etc.   So if the question is should we enforce this law when we have the criminal who broke the law in custody for breaking another law, the only realistic answer is that we would be stupid not to.

For example, consider a person is brought in for shoplifting and as it turns out this is a person who has snuck across our boarders illegally, has stolen a social security number and is working illegally in violation of our employment laws.  You could basically throw out the shoplifting charge, detain and deport the individual based on the other charges.   You would actually only need the original charge to show just cause for the initial detention of the persons.   This is a similar case to the drunk driver who is pulled over for having a license plate light out.   The officer probably doesn't really care about the burnt out bulb, but the contact allows him to get close enough to make a drunk driving charge stick.  You would be amazed by how many serious crimes are solved or resolved by simple traffic violations bringing the police in contact with people, checking their ID's and making sure they aren't wanted for something else too.

Somehow in our culture we have taken this ability away from our officers because we don't want to offend Hispanics.  Somehow someone decided that it would tick off the whole community if we prosecuted the criminals within that community (yes I realize that there are illegal immigrants of all ethnicities,  but the vast majority come across the Mexican boarder and are Hispanic).  Now when an officer

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