the fact is we have in our jails/prisons
96,000 non citizens.
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p10.pdf at an average incarceration/bare minimum rate of $26,000 annually,
https://www.federalregister.gov/art...etermination-of-average-cost-of-incarceration that comes out to be $2 ½ billion dollars per year.
Incarceration in the United States is a huge problem, I'm pretty sure that more people are in our jails than the total population for small countries.
So, before we even talk about the 100,000 illegal immigrants currently residing in our prison system, we should probably talk about the problem as a whole. Why on earth do we need to have 2 million people in jail, with another 4 million on parole/ probation?
When thinking about the whole thing I often wonder how many of those people are incarcerated for simple things that shouldn't even be crimes. . . much less jail-able offenses.
As far as the number of undocumented residents in our prisons, I also wonder how many of them are in prison for immigration problems alone. I other words, if they were to have been able to easily immigrate into the United States in the first place. . . and have legal residence, would they be in prison in the first place?
I'd be that would cut the number of people in prison down quite a bit. . . perhaps the nearly 10,000 people in prisons run by ICE could be released if they weren't punished for draconian immigration laws.
Additionally, if we were to slack of on our prohibition style drug enforcement, I'd imagine that that number would drop by at least another 30%. . . so that'd put the total of illegal immigrants that should actually be in jail at around 40,000 and therefore at least cut the cost in half.
Does not include the cost/damages and misery to US citizens and families by these folks…, nor would it cover costs to investigate nor adjudicate these crimes. Understanding that not all those would be illegal, but would have to assume the majority are...that is something to ponder.
I'd say that the cost/ misery to US citizens by illegal immigrants is just about equal to the cost/ misery to US citizens by a similarly sized group of legal residents.
People are people, you collect 11 million people and there are going to be plenty of jerks.
How much might that be if we just had open borders? Who knows but probably a lot more and a lot more misery to US citizens.
Honestly, if we were to drastically reduce the red-tape involved with immigration and allowed people to easily enter the country legally, the misery in this place would go down.
Millions of otherwise innocent and hardworking people could stop being second-class humans and actually participate in society.