Kathryn Michelle Steinle
The crime zone.
Kate Steinle, a 32-year-old woman with an infectious smile, was murdered by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times, but returned yet again, committed drug offenses, then went to San Francisco ‒ because it is a “sanctuary city.” Federal officials put a hold on him, but San Francisco officials released him from jail despite the hold, to do what he pleased.
It pleased him to go to a tourist attraction and shoot Kathryn Steinle in the back, severing her aorta. His defense counsel claimed the gun discharged accidentally ‒ three times. Her last words were, “Daddy, help me.” But her father couldn’t help her. It was too late. “Liberal” politicians and “progressive” illusions had doomed her.
This leads us to define Murphy’s Law of Sanctuaries:
You can have a sanctuary city that is safe for young women to go for a walk, or safe for repeat offenders to roam free ‒ but not safe for both.
The jail zone.
After decades of decline, for the last two years both violent and property crime rates are rising in California. But these depressing figures are minimized or covered up by public officials. If poverty causes crime, as leftists claim, why is crime increasing when the economy is improving? I’ll tell you why. After overcrowding in prisons and jails resulted in federal lawsuits, thousands of convicted felons are being released early.
One of these recently murdered a police officer and wounded another. The murderer apparently was not an immigrant, although news media are reluctant to release this information. But 23% of prisoners in Los Angeles County jails are illegal aliens. If not for them, there would be no overcrowding ‒ and no push for early release. Public officials and police chiefs know this better than I do, but they don’t dare say it.
I have never understood the liberal assumption that if there were justice in the world, there would be fewer rather than more prisoners.
− Theodore Dalrymple, author, prison psychiatrist
The construction zone.
Some time ago, the house next door was being renovated. Trucks frequently blocked our driveway. I walked across the street to take a photo of the blocked driveway to show the police. But I realized that the hammering had ceased. The workers had disappeared into the building. I went back inside my house, and the hammering resumed.
Apparently the workers feared I would call immigration. The contractor arrived every Friday afternoon and paid the workers – in cash. The workers were all Latino. Black construction workers are quite rare. I don’t know whether the contractor was withholding federal and state income tax, Social Security and Medicare tax, or state disability insurance, or paying unemployment insurance or workers’ compensation premiums. But I wouldn’t bet a penny that he was.
The hospital zone.
I spent most of my professional life at Los Angeles County–USC Medical Center. The waiting rooms are more crowded than ever, but instead of a majority of African Americans, they now contain mainly Latinos. Does this mean that most blacks are now doing well and do not need county care? Or does it mean that many still need it but have been crowded out, and waiting times are intolerably long?
There are at least 10 to 20 million illegal immigrants in the United States. No one knows the true total. If you think the lines are already long at public hospitals and clinics, wait until even more immigrants “jump the line.”
Many patients’ charts contain incorrect addresses and phone numbers. Patients move frequently, and they may give phony ID because they are illegal, or because they are using someone else’s Medicare or Medicaid card. If an abnormal test result comes back, we can’t contact the patient. Practicing good medicine becomes problematic.
The vehicular zone.
Some time ago my car was rear-ended while stopped in traffic – hard enough to dent the gas tank. If it were hit a little harder, my only choice would be regular or extra-crispy. The other driver spoke no English and had no insurance. I copied the information from his driver’s license, as well as the plate number and description of his car. I sent the required report to DMV.
I paid the $500 deductible, but my insurance company reported that the man’s driver’s license was counterfeit. The plates were from a wrecked car, so the owner could not be identified. I couldn’t prove he was uninsured, so the uninsured-motorist coverage didn’t apply.
If the police issued the man a citation, he could throw it away. If he were arrested, he would be booked under the false name, and he could bail out and thumb his nose at our legal system. He could get on an airliner, and the TSA would have no idea who he was. He could vote – here in California, no ID is required. And where it is required, the phony license would serve nicely.
But now illegal immigrants need not pay for counterfeit driver’s licenses. California is issuing them genuine licenses. Thus far over 800,000 have been issued. It is becoming painfully obvious that it is foolish to obey the law. Is this the lesson we wish to teach young people?
The school zone.
This zone reports severe, worsening overcrowding and chronic shortages of personnel, equipment, and funding. Despite this, multilingual education persists. In one case, a Vietnamese American complained that his child was forced to take all classes in Spanish. This is multiculturalism gone mad.
The university zone.
In California as in many states, illegal immigrants pay in-state tuition. But if students apply from neighboring Arizona, they must pay higher out-of-state tuition. Cross the border from Mexico, sí. Cross the state line from Arizona, no. Go figure. Of course, it helps if you are from a favored ethnic group. When an excellent student I know applied for the psychology Ph.D. program at UCLA, she was told her chances were slim unless she was a Pacific islander. This is multiculturalism…well, you get the picture.
The twilight zone.
This zone is inhabited by leftist politicians and academics. It must be a really nice place:
● There, illegal immigrants don’t “jump the line” and push ahead of people who have fulfilled all the requirements and then have to wait years for their turn to immigrate.
● There, illegal immigrants don’t drive down wages or displace citizens from jobs. They have nothing to do with unemployment or lack of wage increases in construction or other industries.
● There, public hospitals and clinics aren’t flooded with immigrants, legal and illegal, who increase costs, while crowding out citizens who are down on their luck. There, nobody is concerned with the care of a 50-year-old black man who was laid off, lost his health insurance, and may have served his country in the military. No, he must “wait his turn” at the clinic, behind people who arrived recently – and perhaps illegally – then pushed to the front of the line.
● There, drivers don’t have to worry about uninsured, unidentifiable motorists who force up the cost of auto insurance and make accident reporting a sham. They don’t have to worry about phony licenses, which serve as identification for getting on airliners or voting.
● There, schools and jails aren’t overtaxed to the point of collapse. They send their children to private schools or public schools in affluent areas, so what happens at inner-city public schools doesn’t interest them.
● Residents of the twilight zone never worry about lost jobs, lowered wages, or weakened unions.
● They go to private doctors and hospitals, so what happens at public hospitals doesn’t affect them – or so they believe.
● They can afford collision repairs and are unconcerned with counterfeit identity documents.
● Their children don’t need minimum-wage jobs as the first rung on the economic ladder. So when these jobs are taken by immigrants, they don’t realize that they are stealing that rung ‒ and therefore stealing the ladder itself ‒ from poor Americans, especially minorities.
● They live and work in low-crime areas, so their chief concern with law enforcement is traffic tickets, not violent criminals who vanish across the border.
Residents of the twilight zone actually think they are humanitarians for giving away money, jobs, school desks, and places in clinic waiting rooms that don’t belong to them, but belong to people less fortunate than themselves ‒ often minorities. Residents of the twilight zone should recall the old saying:
Who gives away what isn’t his’n
Must give it back or go to prison.
Perhaps exporting skilled jobs and importing unskilled workers is not an economic masterstroke. Yes, in the short term, some businesses get cheap labor, and Democrats get more voters. But in the long term, what then?
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