Laws Wanted for Alien Crime Tracking

The recent noteworthy speech by former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, at the Iowa Straw Poll, is a direct impetus for President Bush to pass law on non-citizen "crime and punishment." One recent example Gingrich gave of crime and immigration was the example of the Newark, N.J., slaying of three college students by a non-status. He also brought up when someone is charged with a felony, their citizen status isn't always checked because the laws differ from state to state. He also raised concern about some states not checking status when they should.

This has to be true because of the fact that the federal government doesn't have access to the same records as city law enforcement personnel.

What the situation is now, when someone gets into the United States with a forged passport, by smuggling, or gets through customs without accurate ID, and he or she isn't data by the U.S. Department of Immigration, we don't know the person is here. Too frequently we find ourselves surprised in criminal cases and in a position where we can't find the physical location of the culprit. It gets even more complicated than finding a U.S. citizen who has committed a crime. No matter what we enact for laws, wrong is wrong, and in the case of felony crimes the culprit knows it. Why is this happening and why are these people getting away with it? It's because the whomever guilty belongs to a foreign country whereas if we divvy punishment we'll face conflict from their homeland. So exactly what is it that happens when the felon is caught and brought to justice in the U.S.? You guessed it, the contraband is confiscated and the person is deported. For many it's simply a free ticket and plane ride to go back home.

Illegal drug trade, weapons and smuggling of precious gems are projects that fit this bill. We know from broadcasts contraband involves incredible amounts of money. So if the crime is serious, causes conflict and attracts enough attention, there's basically nothing U.S. officials can do except get a conviction and send the criminal packing. Then a key reason to inquire about and legalize immigrants is because if somebody does the crime, he or she needs to get the punishment. It also means immigration officials are required to do diligent tracking of expired passports and visas, and untraceable driver's licenses.

A flip-side of the issue is when a U.S. citizen visiting a foreign country becomes an accused, there's no court in many cases, just prison. And still yet, this same thing has also happened with cases of legally accounted for journalists and visitors.

A year 2006 example in Connecticut was a case of a man from a foreign country who was found with $15-million worth of an illegal narcotic, and it was closer than I and many people imagined possible. Another issue with untraceable citizen status crime is retaliation other than the crime itself, making it equally difficult for law enforcement officials to head it off. There's other issues of organized crime not always based from a pinnacle in the U.S. Hopefully the shortest and easiest step is legalization of everybody so everyone is accounted for, thus making for a more efficiently run country. Such laws will give acknowledgment and status for the good people who may be faced with financial and language barriers, and have no intent with crime.

A member of the Republican Party, Mr. Gingrich was elected for Speaker of the House from 1995 to 1999. He was also a participant of the 104th and 105th Congresses of the United States. With regard to our immigration laws affecting crime resolution, I'm inclined to agree with his speech from the Iowa Straw Poll of 2007.