The gangs of Virginia. Who would’ve thought that Virginia would one day have a growing gang problem? Usually a southwest/southeast D.C. phenomenon, violent thug group activity has increased across the river.
But these gang members aren’t black; they’re Hispanic, mostly illegal aliens. Not only are they shooting and knifing each other on the street in broad daylight (and killing bystanders), their very presence on the street is illegal.
Michelle Malkin’s blog is the first place you should visit to find resources and information about the horde of illegal immigrants crowding out the nation’s public schools, draining its health care system and committing crime. Yesterday she cited a City Journal article by Heather Mac Donald, “The Immigrant Gang Plague”:
Federal law enforcement officials in Virginia are tracking with alarm the spread of gang violence from Northern Virginia west into the Shenandoah Valley and south toward Charlottesville, a trend so disturbing that they secured federal funds this May to stanch the mayhem. “This is beyond a regional problem. It is, in fact, a national problem,” said FBI assistant director Michael Mason, head of the bureau’s Washington field office.
Open-borders apologists dismiss the Hispanic crime threat by observing that black crime rates are even higher. True, but irrelevant: the black population is not growing, whereas Hispanic immigration is reaching virtually every part of the country, sometimes radically changing local demographics. With a felony arrest rate up to triple that of whites, Hispanics can dramatically raise community crime levels.
Many cops and youth workers blame the increase in gang appeal on the disintegration of the Hispanic family. The trends are worsening, especially for U.S.-born Hispanics. In California, 67 percent of children of U.S.-born Hispanic parents lived in an intact family in 1990; by 1999, that number had dropped to 56 percent. The percentage of Hispanic children living with a single mother in California rose from 18 percent in 1990 to 29 percent in 1999. Nationally, single-parent households constituted 25 percent of all Hispanic households with minor children in 1980; by 2000, the proportion had jumped to 34 percent.
Bad news.
I don’t know how the Virginia Attorney General’s or U.S. Attorneys Offices are set up, but they should follow the lead of the office in D.C. Under the direction of the former U.S. Attorney, Wilma Lewis (a Bill Clinton appointee), the office created the Gang and Intelligence Unit (re-named Organized Crime and Narcotics Trafficking) in the late 1990s. Notorious gangs were prosecuted under federal law, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. If there wasn’t enough evidence to put thugs away for murder (they often killed witnesses), they’d be put away for life for racketeering.
You hardly ever read gang-related stories in D.C. involving black gangs these days. Hispanic gangs dominate the headlines.
Washington Post (registration req.) gang-related stories:
— Assistant Prosecutor To Focus On Gangs
— Killing at N.Va. Party May Be Tied to Gang
— Va. Man Guilty Of Gang Activity
— Va. Teenager Pleads Guilty in Machete Attack
As Virginia’s law enforcement units struggle to handle this mess, I wonder if it will occur to them to deport the criminals back where they came from? We’ll see.
Addendum: At least Virginians (legal residents) get to protect themselves with firearms, unlike D.C. residents.
It may occur to the residents before it occurs to the officials. The virginas have a peculiar mindset about justice. I’ve often wished people were more like that here in Illinois.
Comment by Deb — 08.17.04 @ 9:23 am
I’ve worked with criminal street gang members for the last 14 years professionally. Problems with MS-13, 18th Sreet, and other gangs predominantly made up of illegal immigrants have drastically changed my perspective on illegal immigration over the years.
We are creating our own underclass, and we’re importing them by choice. When will we realize that this is a foolish policy, as a country, and that an underclass is far more expensive, in the long run, than paying legal residents a fair wage to do a job. There was a point in time not that long ago when AMericans weren’t too good to do many jobs. Personally, I cleaned houses when I was in school, and never thought there was any shame to doing so. I’d have cleaned hotel rooms, too, if there were any in my rural hometown.
The only group that is currently benefitting from our glut of illegal immigrants is corporate America. Which makes liberal support for this issue all the more difficult to understand…where is the win/win in allowing millions of illegal immigrants to compromise homeland security, devalue wages, flood the labor market with low-skilled workers willing to work for next to nothing, and passing the expense for all of this along to the local tax payers who are forced to educate, provide health care to, and pay for trhe incarceration of illegals?
I wish the black community would come out against this policy. ANyone who has worked with historic black communities like Overtown in the Miami area can see at firsthand the impact that unchecked immigration has had on the segment of the black community that is still struggling to achieve economic success.
Thanks for addressing this important issue on your blog.
Hope others will take note.
Catz
Comment by catzmeow — 08.17.04 @ 11:37 am
This isn’t a liberal vs conservative issue.
Look at Bush’s amnesty plan. Look at the plan to give illegals social security benefits. Look at Bush speaking Spanish during the last silly season campaign.
In Maryland, the former INS did raids on a commerical strip named Rockville Pike. The next day, all of the restaurants on the strip had help wanted signs out.
GOVERNMENT construction sites have been raided to find illegal aliens.
A friend of mine went to a spot where “Hispanic” day laborers go for jobs. He was there 1 or 2 weeks and was never asked to do a job.
Blacks are complaining, but no press is being given to it.
Comment by DarkStar — 08.17.04 @ 12:20 pm
[…] 2004
Into the void
At a time when many blacks are improving their lot, but Hispanics are taking Johnson’s bait and falling into the welfare trap. I t […]
Pingback by Inoperable Terran » Into the void — 08.17.04 @ 1:13 pm
What can be done when our own Government has sold us out? We are fast becoming a third world country and our representatives have mostly been bought and sold. Greed is rampant in corporate America. For petes sake Lincoln warned of the threat of Corporate, industrial and military combine, way back then and Eisenhower reiterated the same when leaving office. Nothing will be done till its a total crisis and Americans go on the March and stop reelecting these fools.
Comment by John Gilmere — 03.21.05 @ 4:27 am