Wednesday, August 22, 2007

It's Illegal to Come, But Not To Stay

Did you know that although you have broken the law by entering the US illegally, you are not breaking the law by being in the country? Sound confusing? It isn't to the warped judicial minds of the Kansas Court of Appeals.

Thanks to CNS, I ran across the story of illegal alien, Nicholas Martinez, who was sentenced to a year in jail after pleading guilty to possession of cocaine and endangering a child. Martinez was caught using his young son to help sell the cocaine.

The judge said Martinez couldn't be put on probation because of his immigration status.

But on appeal, a three-judge panel threw out the sentence, based on an apparent contradiction in U.S. law. While it is illegal to enter the country without the proper documents and permissions, it is not necessarily illegal to be in the country.

In its opinion, the court explained that Congress had implicitly created the distinction: "While Congress has criminalized the illegal entry into this country, it has not made the continued presence of an illegal alien in the United States a crime unless the illegal alien has previously been deported," said the opinion.

What we have here is a government gone mad. First, their should be no way anyone, legal or illegal, should be able to plea bargain out of jail time when they have used their child to help them peddle drugs. Anyone that wants this vermin free in their community deserves to have him in their home for a border.

Second, our legislators should be able to write a law that makes it not only illegal to come into this country improperly, but also to be here and the penalty should increase with the amount of time spent here.

Third, judges need to stop looking for legal loopholes to aid and abet defendants who are obviously guilty and start enforcing the spirit of justice. Our system is out of control because it is not an effort to determine guilt and innocence, but rather a theatrical display of one-upmanship and gotcha.

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