Re: moving targets…
Brazilian President President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — who is right more than he’s wrong about most things — signed a bill last Thursday that “regularizes” the situation of the estimated 200,000 undocumented immigrants in his country.
Naturalization, his press spokesman said, improves “the situation of thousands of foreigners who are in the country without documents and are the target of traffickers in people or drugs, among other criminal organizations.”
Besides making undocumented immigrants a less tempting target for criminals, it has an added effect of cutting into the criminal labor pool. Not that undocumented people are more likely to be criminals, but in the United States, where one must fill out an I-9 form for any legitimate job, the undocumented often have no choice but to take an illegitimate one.
And, people are generally rational about risks. Crime really doesn’t pay and the risks are much higher. Remove the risk from taking a legitimate job, and there’s almost no upside to working for gangsters.
mexfiles.net 