The Non-Crime, Crime
Undocumented migration is as close to a victimless crime as you can get. It’s a misdemeanor for those without documentation. Those who overstay their visas are in violation of civil law.
Living and working in the United States without legal authorization is a crime, but who are the victims?
Who gets harmed?
Undocumented immigrants are underrepresented in violent criminal statistics by a significant margin. Their arrest and incarceration rates for violence are consistently about half those of native-born U.S. citizens.
Instead, they come to occupy jobs that are unpleasant, backbreaking, and poorly paid. More than 40 percent of crop farmworkers lack legal authorization to be in the country. Thirty to fifty percent of meat-packing industry workers are undocumented migrants.
Citizens and legal residents are not clamoring to pick oranges or slaughter pigs.
Immigrants, both legal and undocumented, live in designated enclaves. These are segregated or semi-segregated neighborhoods. Roughly 30–40% of Latino-led neighborhoods are majority-Latino locales, translating to 20,000–30,000 census tracts across the U.S.
These are not just culturally vibrant hubs—they often face significant structural challenges, including overcrowding, poverty, and limited access to healthcare.
And migrants pay billions in taxes, both income and sales.
Mexican migrants have been trekking across the border since the early 1900s. Washington traditionally has spun the false narrative that migrants are a national security threat.
This happened during the Great Depression, when up to a million Mexicans were coerced or talked into going to Mexico. Operation Wetback in the early 1950s resulted in a similar number being ousted.
Donald and his acolytes are following an old script, just tweaked to add some terror and cruelty to the xenophobic campaign.
In the end, we will still be here just in greater numbers. We offer cheap labor. Money trumps xenophobia.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 