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In RealClearInvestigations, James Varney and Abigail Degnan explore the known unknowns of migrant crime as illegal immigration has surged under the Biden administration. What they found belies euphemizing the word “illegal,” since out of illegal immigration flow a multitude of crimes.

They report:

  • A migrant's first step across the border is a lawbreaking one -- whether done with overtly malign intent or not.

  • It is often followed by life on the law’s margins: living in the U.S. without insurance or proper work papers, providing illicit labor, turning to black markets for counterfeit Social Security cards, or becoming targets for robbers or extortionists.

  • Illegality surrounds masses of newly arrived “unaccompanied alien children.” The feds have mishandled these new arrivals, meaning minors are routinely trafficked and U.S. child labor laws widely violated.

  • Immigration illegality surfaces across the United States. A street in Corona, Queens, has been transformed “into the city’s boldest open-air market for sex" – one advertised on YouTube.

  • Dealers in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, an open-air drug market, tend to be "Hondos" -- Honduran migrants.

  • Those migrants who work for legal businesses are also breaking the law, for example, through widespread identity theft victimizing unwitting Americans.

  • The problem begins south of the border. Vulnerable people making the more than 2,000-mile trek from the Darien Gap in Panama fall victim to rape and thievery.

  • While migrant advocates argue that illegal arrivals commit crimes at lower rates than Americans, the claim is unverifiable because the federal government and most states do not break down crimes by immigration status. Nor do “sanctuary” cities cooperate.

In RealClearInvestigations, Amanda Kieffer reports how occupational licensing regulations increasingly are a major impediment to ex-cons trying to go straight.

She reports:

  • It’s a little-noticed development as unionization has declined in the private American workforce, erecting comparable obstacles to good jobs, plus other givens of a normal citizen’s life.

  • As the U.S. continues to house the highest number of prisoners in the world, concerns are growing among both advocates of “decarceration” on the progressive left and crime-fighters on the right.

  • Researchers and advocates say the employment barriers of occupational licensing make it more likely that ex-cons will return to crime, costing the economy billions.

  • Ex-convicts are subject to more than 46,000 state and federal collateral consequences of criminal convictions – penalties beyond doing time and paying fines. These include denied voting, Second Amendment and housing rights.

  • In Michigan, those with a felony involving physical injury can be ruled ineligible for state nursing scholarships.

  • Alabama has 825 collateral consequences on the books for ex-cons.

  • In Virginia, a conviction for any of 176 different crimes -- from capital murder to kidnapping to pointing a laser at a cop -- can bar an ex-offender from a so-called direct care position, including substance abuse counseling.

  • Rudolph H. Carey III was dismissed as a drug counselor in Virginia for nearly five years when his employer discovered his disqualifying conviction. He’s back at his chosen vocation only after Gov. Glenn Youngkin granted him a pardon last year.

  • That was the upside: The law that prevented Carey from working as a counselor is still on the books.

In RealClearInvestigations, Toby Dershowitz and Max Friedman explore South Africa's possible motives in accusing Israel of post-Oct. 7 genocide in the World Court: It appears less an act of probity than one of cynical collaboration with one of Israel’s fiercest enemies, Iran.

They report:

  • Shortly before undertaking the multi-million-dollar legal action against Israel in December, the bereft South African ruling party, the African National Congress, suddenly resolved its longstanding and crippling debt issues.

  • There's no proof that Pretoria and Tehran colluded in this instance, but they have been diplomatically and financially close since long before fighters from Hamas, one of Iran's terrorist proxies, invaded southern Israel last Oct. 7 in a rampage of rape and killing.

  • A flurry of diplomatic activity illustrates how the two nations have worked hand-in-glove since Oct. 7.

  • In the past nine years, moreover, South Africa and Hamas have signed two memorandums of understanding to cooperate in pressuring Israel diplomatically and economically.

  • Further, South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, appears to have a sordid pecuniary interest in Iran stretching back further – at least two decades, when the company he was leading was implicated in an alleged bribery and influence-peddling scheme between Iran and his telecommunications giant.

  • The South Africa-Iran relationship fits a larger pattern in which the nation famed for Nelson Mandela’s championing of human rights has become an ally of some of the most oppressive regimes in the world – including Russia, Syria, Sudan and Hamas.

In RealClearInvestigations, Julie Kelly examines anomalies surrounding the pipe bombs placed outside the Washington headquarters of both major parties on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol siege – including perhaps the greatest mystery of all: why official Washington has lost interest in this alleged act of domestic terrorism. She asks:

  • Why did the Secret Service detail assigned to Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris fail to find the easily discoverable device before her visit to the DNC that day?
  • If the threat was so grave, why does video show authorities allowing children to cross the street toward the bombs after they were discovered?
  • Why was the bomb at RNC headquarters discovered by a Democratic party donor and government contractor with ties to the FBI?
  • Why did law enforcement repeatedly describe the bombs as highly dangerous, while also saying they couldn’t have denotated on their own because of their cheap kitchen timers?
  • Why was cell phone data that might help locate the perpetrator corrupted?
  • Why did the FBI’s geofence warrant to obtain phone data from Google omit January 5 – the day the pipe bombs were allegedly planted?
  • Why was the FBI honcho previously in charge of the investigation into a kidnap plot against Michigan’s Governor brought in to lead the stalled investigation?

Casting a national dragnet, authorities have tracked down and prosecuted more than 1,300 Jan. 6 defendants – almost all of whom were unarmed, including 62 individuals so far this year. And yet the perpetrator of what could have been the only deadly attack by a civilian that day appears to have vanished without a trace.

 

RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week

In RealClearInvestigations, James Varney and Abigail Degnan explore the known unknowns of migrant crime as illegal immigration has surged under the Biden administration. What they found belies euphemizing the word “illegal,” since out of illegal immigration flow a multitude of crimes.

They report:

  • A migrant's first step across the border is a lawbreaking one -- whether done with overtly malign intent or not.

  • It is often followed by life on the law’s margins: living in the U.S. without insurance or proper work papers, providing illicit labor, turning to black markets for counterfeit Social Security cards, or becoming targets for robbers or extortionists.

  • Illegality surrounds masses of newly arrived “unaccompanied alien children.” The feds have mishandled these new arrivals, meaning minors are routinely trafficked and U.S. child labor laws widely violated.

  • Immigration illegality surfaces across the United States. A street in Corona, Queens, has been transformed “into the city’s boldest open-air market for sex" – one advertised on YouTube.

  • Dealers in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, an open-air drug market, tend to be "Hondos" -- Honduran migrants.

  • Those migrants who work for legal businesses are also breaking the law, for example, through widespread identity theft victimizing unwitting Americans.

  • The problem begins south of the border. Vulnerable people making the more than 2,000-mile trek from the Darien Gap in Panama fall victim to rape and thievery.

  • While migrant advocates argue that illegal arrivals commit crimes at lower rates than Americans, the claim is unverifiable because the federal government and most states do not break down crimes by immigration status. Nor do “sanctuary” cities cooperate.

In RealClearInvestigations, Amanda Kieffer reports how occupational licensing regulations increasingly are a major impediment to ex-cons trying to go straight.

She reports:

  • It’s a little-noticed development as unionization has declined in the private American workforce, erecting comparable obstacles to good jobs, plus other givens of a normal citizen’s life.

  • As the U.S. continues to house the highest number of prisoners in the world, concerns are growing among both advocates of “decarceration” on the progressive left and crime-fighters on the right.

  • Researchers and advocates say the employment barriers of occupational licensing make it more likely that ex-cons will return to crime, costing the economy billions.

  • Ex-convicts are subject to more than 46,000 state and federal collateral consequences of criminal convictions – penalties beyond doing time and paying fines. These include denied voting, Second Amendment and housing rights.

  • In Michigan, those with a felony involving physical injury can be ruled ineligible for state nursing scholarships.

  • Alabama has 825 collateral consequences on the books for ex-cons.

  • In Virginia, a conviction for any of 176 different crimes -- from capital murder to kidnapping to pointing a laser at a cop -- can bar an ex-offender from a so-called direct care position, including substance abuse counseling.

  • Rudolph H. Carey III was dismissed as a drug counselor in Virginia for nearly five years when his employer discovered his disqualifying conviction. He’s back at his chosen vocation only after Gov. Glenn Youngkin granted him a pardon last year.

  • That was the upside: The law that prevented Carey from working as a counselor is still on the books.

In RealClearInvestigations, Toby Dershowitz and Max Friedman explore South Africa's possible motives in accusing Israel of post-Oct. 7 genocide in the World Court: It appears less an act of probity than one of cynical collaboration with one of Israel’s fiercest enemies, Iran.

They report:

  • Shortly before undertaking the multi-million-dollar legal action against Israel in December, the bereft South African ruling party, the African National Congress, suddenly resolved its longstanding and crippling debt issues.

  • There's no proof that Pretoria and Tehran colluded in this instance, but they have been diplomatically and financially close since long before fighters from Hamas, one of Iran's terrorist proxies, invaded southern Israel last Oct. 7 in a rampage of rape and killing.

  • A flurry of diplomatic activity illustrates how the two nations have worked hand-in-glove since Oct. 7.

  • In the past nine years, moreover, South Africa and Hamas have signed two memorandums of understanding to cooperate in pressuring Israel diplomatically and economically.

  • Further, South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, appears to have a sordid pecuniary interest in Iran stretching back further – at least two decades, when the company he was leading was implicated in an alleged bribery and influence-peddling scheme between Iran and his telecommunications giant.

  • The South Africa-Iran relationship fits a larger pattern in which the nation famed for Nelson Mandela’s championing of human rights has become an ally of some of the most oppressive regimes in the world – including Russia, Syria, Sudan and Hamas.

In RealClearInvestigations, Julie Kelly examines anomalies surrounding the pipe bombs placed outside the Washington headquarters of both major parties on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol siege – including perhaps the greatest mystery of all: why official Washington has lost interest in this alleged act of domestic terrorism. She asks:

  • Why did the Secret Service detail assigned to Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris fail to find the easily discoverable device before her visit to the DNC that day?
  • If the threat was so grave, why does video show authorities allowing children to cross the street toward the bombs after they were discovered?
  • Why was the bomb at RNC headquarters discovered by a Democratic party donor and government contractor with ties to the FBI?
  • Why did law enforcement repeatedly describe the bombs as highly dangerous, while also saying they couldn’t have denotated on their own because of their cheap kitchen timers?
  • Why was cell phone data that might help locate the perpetrator corrupted?
  • Why did the FBI’s geofence warrant to obtain phone data from Google omit January 5 – the day the pipe bombs were allegedly planted?
  • Why was the FBI honcho previously in charge of the investigation into a kidnap plot against Michigan’s Governor brought in to lead the stalled investigation?

Casting a national dragnet, authorities have tracked down and prosecuted more than 1,300 Jan. 6 defendants – almost all of whom were unarmed, including 62 individuals so far this year. And yet the perpetrator of what could have been the only deadly attack by a civilian that day appears to have vanished without a trace.

 

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