Pro Amnesty Senators Rally In Support Of Illegal Alien Drunk Drivers

Mickey Kaus has a column that highlights an interesting point in Senate democrat's amnesty supporters' fight against Senator John Cornyn's amendment to the Gang of Eight amnesty bill for illegal aliens. It appears that the language in the amendment calling for amnesty ( or to use the euphemism used in the bill, RPI or “registered provisional immigrant”)for certain illegal aliens who have committed crimes here in America is a major deal killer:

I'm told, by a reliable and well-placed source, that a good deal of the Democratic opposition to John Cornyn's proposed amendment to the Gang of 8 bill has nothing to do with border security. It has to do with DUIs. Specifically, Cornyn's amendment would bar illegal immigrants with misdemeanor DUI convictions from "probationary" legal status, which is the immediate legalization offered by Marco Rubio, et al, to most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S. For the pro-amnesty side, the exclusion of DUI offenders is apparently a deal-killer. There must be a lot of them!

Pro-Gang Democrats (and Republicans) understandably don't want to publicize their DUI defense. DUI offenders are not an inherently popular group, and accidents in which undocumented immigrant drivers kill innocent civilians tend to be well publicized. It's not a coincidence that Obama's executive mini-amnesty of so-called "Dreamers"-issued before the 2012 election-claimed to exclude DUI offenders. But the broader Gang of 8 legislation, written after the election, allows two free misdemeanors-apparently including DUIs-before an illegal immigrant is disqualified.

But wait a minute...isn't this racist profiling?

That's not what the notorious Rightwing NPR thinks:

The influx of Hispanic immigrants to some parts of the U.S. has led to a problem on the highways. In many states, Hispanics account for a disproportionate number of drunk driving deaths. In North Carolina where the Latino population has grown by more than a third in this decade, alcohol-related crashes have become a leading killer of Latinos. And as NPR's Adam Hochberg reports, community groups are trying to reverse that trend.

Nationwide, Latinos rank second only to Native Americans and their alcohol death rate on the highway. The extent of the problem varies from state to state, but community leaders say it seems worse in places where Latinos have newly immigrated. At Al Pueblo, a Hispanic advocacy group in North Carolina, safety director Tony Ascion(ph) says Latino drunk drivers tend to be young men in the U.S. without their families, people who have a lot of free time and a lot of what Ascion calls, machismo.

NPR is doing their best to present this as a mere temporary problem coming from unusual circumstances. In fact, it's pretty culturally rooted.

Especially in young men whom hail from rural Mexico, especially but not exclusively Norteños,(Mexicans from the Northern border states) where drinking and driving doesn't have the same context it does here. It's considered macho for a man to be able to hold his liquor and get behind the wheel. And even when you're caught, an inconvenient DUI can be fixed provided you didn't severely injure of kill anyone (and sometimes even if you did) if you have sufficient connections or pay a suitable amount of mordida to the local police.

There are literally thousands of Americans who've had the experience of suffering injuries or property damage at the hands of illegal aliens,intoxicated or otherwise.

The language of Senator Cornyn's amendment, actually pretty tame, doesn't just single out drunk drivers:

Prohibits illegal aliens convicted of serious misdemeanors, such as domestic violence, aggravated assault, child abuse, violation of a protection order, and drunk driving, from receiving RPI status.

Child abuse, domestic violence, multiple DUIs and aggravated assault are apparently now minor personalty quirks unworthy of serious consideration...not to mention illegally entering the U.S. in the first place!

As for more serious crimes, in California for example, where it's estimated that something like 25% of all illegal aliens in the U.S. reside, they are 5.45 of the population, but around 13% of the prison population. And that's not including the recent ICE release thousands of illegal aliens with criminal records.

Amnesty is a lousy idea with a proven track record of failure anyway. But uf we're talking about a path to citizenship, doesn't it make sense to exclude people who have already shown they have little regard for the responsibilities involved?