Special Order 40

If you live in Los Angeles and you don't know about Special Order 40, you're ignorant of possibly the single most important decision your local government has made. Special Order 40 isn't a law passed by the legislators you elected, at the state, county, or local level. It isn't even a decree by a state or federal judge. Nope. Special Order 40 is a 25-year-old policy of the LAPD which states that the police do not consider illegal immigrants to be lawbreakers merely because of their presence in the country. (Here's an interview with Commission President David S. Cunningham, III, about the policy, via LA Observed.)

What effect does this have on your life? Consider crime for starters: "60% of the members of the notorious 18th Street Gang in Los Angeles were illegal immigrants, estimated to be as many as 20,000", and 95% of outstanding homicide warrants in Los Angeles target illegal aliens. And the matter of crime is just scratching the surface of the problem as a whole. There are emergency rooms closing because they're forced to treat uninsured illegals who can't pay, plus traffic, plus uninsured drivers, plus overcrowded public schools, and so forth and so on. Plus, of course, the OTMs.

Another agent, of supervisory rank, stated, "The smuggling traffic of Mexicans has really slowed. We are experiencing a tremendous increase in OTMs" – border lingo for "other than Mexicans." When queried about the ethnic make up of the OTMs, he answered, "Central and South Americans, Orientals and Middle-Easterners." Middle-Easterners? "Yeah, it varies, but about one in every 10 that we catch, is from a country like Yemen or Egypt." ...

Arabs have been reported crossing the Arizona border for an unknown period. Border rancher George Morgan encounters thousands of illegals crossing his ranch on a well-used trail. He relates a holiday event: "It was Thanksgiving 1998, and I stepped outside my house and there were over a hundred 'crossers' in my yard. Damnedest bunch of illegals I ever saw. All of them were wearing black pants, white shirts and string ties. Maybe they were hoping to blend in," he chuckled. "They took off, I called the Border Patrol, and a while later, an agent, Dan Green, let me know that they had caught them. He said that they were all Iranians."

That's not scary?

The idea that illegal immigrants pay for their presence through taxes is absurd, since the vast majority are paid in cash and make too little money to have any withheld anyway. Just look at the evidence: if illegal immigrants were profitable, wouldn't there be enough tax money to build hospitals and schools to take care of them? Yes.

And don't think I'm unsympathetic. The problem isn't that illegal immigrants are terrible people, but rather that a) Mexico is seriously screwed up and needs wholesale political reform, and b) America refuses to handle illegal immigration realistically and instead ignores it. Right now, we're a huge part of Mexico's problem, since their corrupt government and economy are largely propped up by the cash that illegal immigrants send home from their jobs in America. If we could cut off this cash flow, we might be able to make some progress towards a truly free and prosperous southern neighbor that wouldn't have to export its poorest and most desperate citizens.

I think Israel might have the right idea, but rescinding Special Order 40 and forcing the LAPD to enforce the laws of our country would be a step in the right direction. In conjunction, the rest of the country needs to chip in with funds via the federal government, since the burden of protecting the border shouldn't fall on California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas alone.

Ben Anderson, a retired U.S. Army colonel who lives in Sierra Vista, Ariz., has made a detailed study of the border danger since the flood of illegals began through Cochise County in 1997.

"There is only one way to handle this," the colonel says firmly. "In a world now filled with biowarfare agents, backpack nuclear devices and chemical weapons like Sarin gas, we must militarize the border. There is no other way to stop the flow."

I'd like to think Colonel Anderson is wrong and that we can handle illegal immigration as a law enforcement matter, but if we don't get on the ball soon we may not have any choice in the matter.

Update:
Perhaps this House bill titled "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act" will generate a little movement.

The bill also includes provisions for a national counterterrorism center and a joint intelligence community council. Among the immigration reforms not found in the Senate version are provisions restricting the ability of illegal aliens to obtain drivers’ licenses, making it easier to deport individuals, and expanding judicial review in asylum cases.