>>>And if there was a way to filter out all the "bad guys" from crashing the border I wouldn't mind so much about the illegals coming over. About 30% of inmates are illegals... at least in California.
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>>Source for this statistic?
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>I heard it on the news. But here is a link and I'm sure you can find more if you search.
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>http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_illegal_alien.html
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>"• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.... "

That's a pretty meaningful set of statistics.

1) It suggests the police are better at finding and arresting legal residents than illegals. Shocking. <s>

2) How many illegals are there in LA? I can't find a site with any really good statistics, but at http://www.laalmanac.com/immigration/im04a.htm, they estimate as follows:

If 6.5 percent of California's population were unauthorized immigrants and this percentage were applied to Los Angeles County, there would have been approximately 619,000 unauthorized immigrant residents in the county in 2000.

I suspect 619,000 is low, given that other sites were talking about 7 million illegals in 2000 and the number we're hearing today is 11 million, but let's work with that.

17000/619000 = 2.7%

Even if 17,000 criminals among the illegals is a terribly low estimate, that's nothing like 30% being criminals.

Tamar