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> immigration is not a threat to your life My wife and I have both been hit by illegal immigrants. One of them driving drunk and drinking in the car while he h

> immigration is not a threat to your life My wife and I have both been hit by illegal immigrants. One of them driving drunk and drinking in the car while he hit me, and had no insurance or license, and had a prior DUI that he missed court for. The other (one that hit my wife’s car) simply didn’t have insurance, but wasn’t drinking. My wife’s car had to be repaired heavily (over $5,000), which was paid for by our insurance, and the $500 adoptable was paid for by us. When my car was hit in the back, both of us were in the car, both of us had serious concussions because this accident was much worse. This is the one where the guy was driving with a beer in his hand, and he tried to leave the scene of the accident but one of his engine’s Peripherals was hanging out Of his hood and he couldn’t get his car to start. The fact that the people in question were immigrants (one from Honduras, the other I’m not sure) Is not the problem. The problem is that they are here illegally and in a sanctuary county, which means that the law-enforcement is in a Weird position where they cannot really do anything about petty crimes like driving under the influence, because it’s an expensive process of dealing with the county. So, in both cases, these people are still roaming around probably hitting other people, meanwhile both of us have had to pay to fix our own vehicles and had at least medium level injuries (concussion symptoms last for a lot longer than I realized, and we were both Having serious issues a month later). So, while immigrants don’t necessarily Harm people, illegal immigration certainly does.

mjamil 7y ago
That’s awful. I’m sorry that happened to you. But I’m not sure I understand your argument. If one or both of these drivers were legally in the US, what would law enforcement do differently? From my reading of your situation, it sounds like you had the misfortune of twice encountering under-insured drivers, and had to deal with the consequences. How did you make the (il)logical jump from that to, “Illegal immigration harms people?” It sounds like a causal logical fallacy to me, but I’d appreciate being corrected if you think I’m wrong. Some general problems your situation unintentionally alludes to (not perhaps in your state, but common in the south) are criminalizing the issuance of drivers licenses to undocumented people (which literally prevents them from obtaining insurance), and the fact that these people are working in the shadows and thus being underpaid (and thus not being able to pay for insurance). The problem of under-insured drivers (estimated about 13% of all drivers) is real. Many folks have proposed ways to quantify and address the problem (e.g., [1]). [1] https://www.naic.org/cipr_topics/topic_uninsured_motorists.htm https://www.naic.org/cipr_topics/topic_uninsured_motorists.h...
- gonational 7y ago
  Thanks for the reply. Both were illegal immigrants; one had a license and wasn’t DUI. The answer to why I think this is caused by the illegal status is that, pertaining to when the Honduran immigrant (the DUI one) hit me, I went out of town with my wife during the period of time when he was supposed to go to court and obviously go to jail because he had done the same thing 11 months before and actually left the scene in that case, so he was already wanted, and so I thought “surely he will go to jail for many months...” when we got back to town I called the prosecuting attorney to ask her what happen with his sentencing/verdict/etc., and she told me that he didn’t show up to court. So I asked her “so are you going to go arrest him?“, And she informed me that they don’t handle cases like this by going to the house to arrest him. I was confused thinking ‘oh so this is going to be like an outstanding warrant and he will get arrested when he gets pulled over at some point’. I was frustrated but I thought ‘well it’s only in evitable that he will go to jail eventually’. But then I realized, ‘wait a minute, if he was already arrested for the same thing 11 months before and they didn’t even keep him in jail longer than 12 hours in the drunk tank, why would they ever put him in jail...’. That’s when I started asking more questions and found out (from the PA’s secretary) that the reason they couldn’t arrest him is because if they were to try him for contempt of court they would end up having to deport him, and this is when I found out we were living in a sanctuary county. So the reason he was drinking and driving isn’t because he’s an illegal immigrant or because he was from Honduras. It’s because there is no rule of law when you are letting people break your laws to get into the country to begin with. And if there is no law there is no accountability. If I didn’t have to worry about getting in trouble myself, I might be out drinking rum runners on the highway 24 hours a day. We all like to think of ourselves as virtuous, but, without accountability to the rest of society, we are just wild animals on this rock floating through space.

mjamil 7y ago

That’s awful. I’m sorry that happened to you. But I’m not sure I understand your argument. If one or both of these drivers were legally in the US, what would law enforcement do differently? From my reading of your situation, it sounds like you had the misfortune of twice encountering under-insured drivers, and had to deal with the consequences. How did you make the (il)logical jump from that to, “Illegal immigration harms people?” It sounds like a causal logical fallacy to me, but I’d appreciate being corrected if you think I’m wrong. Some general problems your situation unintentionally alludes to (not perhaps in your state, but common in the south) are criminalizing the issuance of drivers licenses to undocumented people (which literally prevents them from obtaining insurance), and the fact that these people are working in the shadows and thus being underpaid (and thus not being able to pay for insurance). The problem of under-insured drivers (estimated about 13% of all drivers) is real. Many folks have proposed ways to quantify and address the problem (e.g., [1]). [1] https://www.naic.org/cipr_topics/topic_uninsured_motorists.htm https://www.naic.org/cipr_topics/topic_uninsured_motorists.h...

gonational 7y ago
Thanks for the reply. Both were illegal immigrants; one had a license and wasn’t DUI. The answer to why I think this is caused by the illegal status is that, pertaining to when the Honduran immigrant (the DUI one) hit me, I went out of town with my wife during the period of time when he was supposed to go to court and obviously go to jail because he had done the same thing 11 months before and actually left the scene in that case, so he was already wanted, and so I thought “surely he will go to jail for many months...” when we got back to town I called the prosecuting attorney to ask her what happen with his sentencing/verdict/etc., and she told me that he didn’t show up to court. So I asked her “so are you going to go arrest him?“, And she informed me that they don’t handle cases like this by going to the house to arrest him. I was confused thinking ‘oh so this is going to be like an outstanding warrant and he will get arrested when he gets pulled over at some point’. I was frustrated but I thought ‘well it’s only in evitable that he will go to jail eventually’. But then I realized, ‘wait a minute, if he was already arrested for the same thing 11 months before and they didn’t even keep him in jail longer than 12 hours in the drunk tank, why would they ever put him in jail...’. That’s when I started asking more questions and found out (from the PA’s secretary) that the reason they couldn’t arrest him is because if they were to try him for contempt of court they would end up having to deport him, and this is when I found out we were living in a sanctuary county. So the reason he was drinking and driving isn’t because he’s an illegal immigrant or because he was from Honduras. It’s because there is no rule of law when you are letting people break your laws to get into the country to begin with. And if there is no law there is no accountability. If I didn’t have to worry about getting in trouble myself, I might be out drinking rum runners on the highway 24 hours a day. We all like to think of ourselves as virtuous, but, without accountability to the rest of society, we are just wild animals on this rock floating through space.