The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Rudy's No David Dinkins

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Mark Kirkorian makes an absurd comparison between David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani, arguing that Giuliani's comments about illegal immigration not being a crime contradict his "broken windows" theory of policing that involved cracking down on minor offenses before it creates an environment of lawlessness that manifests itself in larger crimes. Of Giuliani's approach to illegal immigration, Kirkorian writes:

You can almost hear Giuliani mouthing Dinkins' excuses, like "If we had a police officer on every other corner, we couldn't stop some of the random violence that goes on" - just change "police officer" to "immigration agent" and "random violence" to "illegal immigration" and you've got Rudy's approach to immigration. Heck, somebody should ask him whether he has Dinkins in mind to replace Julie Myers at ICE.

Apparently Kirkorian cannot tell the difference between "random violence" and somebody who is in the country illegally working as a sous chef. Giuliani has vowed to deport all illegal immigrants who have committed a crime as well as seal the borders to prevent new illegal immigrants from coming in. If Kirkorian is truly arguing that immigration should be treated as a crime, he really has a lot of explaining to do. Does he want 12 million people clogging up our criminal court system? Does he want taxpayers to pay for food and shelter to these criminal immigrants who are in jail?

If so, he should also call out Tom Tancredo for being in favor of a Dinkins approach to illegal immigration. Last year, Tancredo wrote:

A second myth is that House Republicans want to make illegal presence in the USA a felony.

The truth is Democrats voted for the felony provision, and a majority of Republicans (including me) voted against it.

Right now, illegal presence in the USA is not a crime; it is a civil infraction. The House Judiciary Committee voted to make it a felony but then was counseled that millions of new felons could clog our courts.

UPDATE: In this Washington Times story, Tancredo argues that he still supported making illegal immigration a misdermeanor.

topics:
Environment, Law, Immigration