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By Root 411 0

Ideas and Institutions.” Beneath the drawing is a caption reminiscent of the non sequiturs favored by Lou Dobbs and Pat Buchanan: “Immigration statistics for the past year show that the influx of foreigners was the greatest in our history,” it reads, “and also that the hard-working . . . [Americans] are now being supplanted by the criminals and outlaws of all Europe.” In other words, today’s fear that America is accepting too many immigrants (and the wrong kinds, besides) is the same old, same old. Nor are the methods used to stir up anti-immigrant passions in the twenty-first century much different from those of yore, when populist elites also attempted to scare natives into believing that new arrivals threaten not only our economic prosperity but also our safety.

And like today’s nativists, yesteryear’s weren’t averse to fudging the facts to further an anti-immigrant agenda. Another 1903 Judge illustration, “The Unrestricted Dumping-Ground, ” likens immigrants to rats scurrying into the United States “direct from the slums of Europe daily.” The vermin have human heads with swarthy complexions and wear hats or bandannas that read “Mafia,” “Anarchist,” and “Socialist.” One holds a knife with a blade that reads “Assassination”; another carries a pistol with “Murder” written on the grip. In the upper-left-hand corner of the drawing is a likeness of President William McKinley, who had been fatally shot two years earlier by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York. Czolgosz was not an immigrant but a U.S. native, born in Detroit. His parents had immigrated from Poland. Minor detail.

CRIMINAL ALIEN NATION?

These days, opponents of immigration aren’t much interested in details and accuracy either, preferring, as demagogues do, half-truths and innuendo. Whether discussing everyday crime or homeland security, the objective is to play to people’s fears and prejudices. Tom Tancredo declares that “there are 9 to 11 million illegal aliens living amongst us right now who have never had a criminal background check and have never been screened through any terrorism databases.” And Pat Buchanan adds, “The enemy is already inside the gates. How many others among our 11 million ‘undocumented’ immigrants are ready to carry out truck bombings, assassinations, sabotage, skyjackings?” Everything from drunk driving to murder receives extra attention when an undocumented immigrant is involved, leaving the impression, however unsupported by the facts, that the country is in the throes of an illegal alien crime wave.

On July 23, 2007, two men entered a home in Cheshire, Connecticut, and held a husband, wife, and their two daughters—ages seventeen and eleven—hostage for seven hours. The husband was beaten unconscious with a baseball bat, then bound and left in the basement for dead. The wife and daughters were raped, strangled, tied to their beds, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. Only the husband, who awoke to his wife’s screams and, still bound, crawled out of the house in search of help, survived. The two suspects, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, were lifelong criminals out on parole. Komisarjevsky had twenty-one prior felony convictions; Hayes had seventeen. They were caught by police while fleeing the scene.

Less than two weeks later, on August 4, three Newark, New Jersey, college students—two twenty-year-olds and an eighteen-year-old—were lined up against a wall, forced to kneel, and fatally shot. A fourth shooting victim, age nineteen, was wounded but survived. As was the case in the Cheshire murders, the Newark victims had no criminal records. Also like the Connecticut case, the lead suspect in the New Jersey deaths, José Carranza, had repeated run-ins with the law. He’d been arrested three times before on felony charges, including child rape, but released on bail.

You might think these two triple homicides would prompt a national discussion about parole, bail, recidivism, and how a criminal justice system can defend keeping violent predators on such a long leash. In fact, the Cheshire