Dave Neese: Documented facts about ‘undocumented’

Surely it was a white supremacist — or at a minimum a xenophobic bigot — who brazenly uttered these words: “We simply can’t allow people to pour into the United States undetected, unchecked, circumventing the people who are waiting patiently, diligently, lawfully to become immigrants in the country.”

But, lo and behold, these were not the words of some slopebrowed yahoo driving around in a pickup with a confederate decal on the rear window right by the gun rack.

These were the words of none other than Barack Obama, spoken in 2005.

Okay, but surely the following words, spoken in 2007, were the sentiments of a Klan rabblerouser:

“I don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into the country who will work for lower wages than America works and drive down wages even lower than they are now.”

Nope, not Klan words. Those were the words of Bernie Sanders, socialist tribune for the toiling proletariat.

No doubt Barack and Bernie have now “evolved,” as has their party.

Bernie completely misses the point. Lower wages are the very reason a porous border is justified, in the view of Republican oligarchs and their mouthpieces on Capitol Hill — lobbyists, representatives and senators.

Labor unions were once in the forefront making this point, up until the unions started raking in dues from a membership dominated by public employees.

Unlike construction crew or loading dock workers, public employees don’t have to fret about being displaced by illegal alien — oops, undocumented immigrants — who’ll gladly do the job for half pay and without benefits to boot.

News media, too, have little worry of losing their jobs to, say, Guatemalans who never got beyond the sixth grade.

All right, then, but who said “not everyone benefits when immigrants arrive”? Was it David Duke or somebody of that ilk?

Nope. It was Harvard economist George J. Borjas, an immigrant himself (legal).

It was he who also noted that “Immigrants receive government assistance at a greater rate than natives.”

Maybe somebody ought to report this guy to the Southern Poverty Law Center so it can blacklist him as a hate-speechspewing extremist.

Even though Borjas rates legal immigration an overall plus for the nation, he notes that the influx of low-skilled foreigners has increased the size of the country’s bottom-of-the-pyramid workforce by 25 percent. And this, he calculates, drives down their meager wages by as much as $1,500 a year, undermining the minimum-wage hikes Democrats so like to champion.

This, Borjas further notes, has a disparate impact on African-Americans. “Disparate impact” — that used to be a favorite term of Democratic progressives. No mas. You- don’t hear it spoken nowadays in the context of illegal immigration.

Crime is, however, increasingly talked about in this context. But only by Fox News and the Republican National Committee — correct?

Incorrect. Another wrong assumption.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) puts out a report called “Criminal Alien Statistics.” The 2018 edition notes 208,800 criminal aliens in state and federal prisons, doing time for an assortment of felonies at a taxpayer cost of $1.4 billion annually.

That seems like a lot of offenders behind bars if immigrant crime is merely, as frequently asserted, a “dog-whistle” term the Know Nothings employ to incite resentment of brown people.

Looking at a sample of 197,000 criminal aliens, the GAO reports an average 10 criminal offenses per alien among this group. Ten!

For the period roughly 20112016, the GAO reports the following number of offenses by illegal aliens:

— Drugs: 761,200 state, 336,600 federal.

— Assaults: 397,000 state, 108,400 federal.

— Weapons: 124,709 state, 44,500 federal.

— Sex offenses: 120,300 state, 13,600 federal.

— Robberies: 54,700 state, 13,500 federal.

— Homicides: 50,300 state, 6,000 federal.

— Kidnappings: 18,600 state, 5,000 federal.

Notice these are not jaywalking-level infractions. What might the magnitude of such statistics be without sanctuary cities?

You may make what you will of such data. But it’s hard to ponder these numbers and come to a conclusion that illegal aliens

— yes, illegal aliens, that’s the term used in federal statutes — are a cohort of choir boys.

Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are entitled to their own political views on the topic of illegal immigration — but not to their own data regarding its effect on crime and economics.