Your Opinion: The data on crime and illegal immigration

Dear Editor:

Is Donald Trump right or wrong on crime and illegals?

I support legal immigration. There are many, many people who want to get into our nation legally; people who would clearly be assets. Also, I spent 41 years working in plants in our nation. I saw firsthand that many of those whom I suspected of being illegals worked at least as hard as everyone else in those plants, probably much harder but they are a drag on our economy.

There is no way that they earn enough to pay the $9,000 a year it costs every year to educate every one of their children. Only after they pay the cost of their children's education do they start paying down the $11,000 per citizen our federal government spends each year. After that they must start paying their share of state and local taxes.

We have over eight million unemployed, we have 93 million working age Americans who are not looking for work and we have 52 million on the taxpayer teat. Some of those not even looking for work, and who are being supported by taxpayers, need to be told to get one of the jobs held by illegals, and to start at least partially supporting themselves. (There are those who we need to assist, but the assistance needs to be funded and distributed at the local level, not by a "one size fits all" federal vote-buying level. All government spending comes from the pockets of taxpayers/consumers, or it is borrowed. D.C. has no magic money tree.)

The 11 million illegals reported to be in our nation make up about 3.7 percent of our population. According to United States Sentencing Commission data for FY2014 they make up over 13 percent of all those sentenced for federal, non-immigration related crimes. If you include immigration crimes they make 37 percent of those sentenced.

Broken down by some of the primary offenses, illegal immigrants represented 16.8 percent of drug trafficking cases, 20.0 percent of kidnapping/hostage taking, 74.1 percent of drug possession, 12.3 percent of money laundering, and 12.0 percent of murder convictions.

Now you have the data; you decide.