The Waterkooler

Recent Immigration Stories

FAIR Fact Sheet

We know that illegals are 5 times more likely to engage in criminal activity, as studies show. It is common sense: You come hear illegally, your first act in this country is to break it's laws; you have to find illegal underground sources for illegal documentation, you live each day a lie, you become desensitized to the law. The simple fact is that illegals coming into this country are taxing our prison systems.

In 1980, our federal and state prisons housed fewer than 9,000 criminal aliens. By the end of 1999, these same prisons housed over 68,000 criminal aliens.1 Today, criminal aliens account for over 29 percent of prisoners in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities and a higher share of all federal prison inmates.2 These prisoners represent the fastest growing segment of the federal prison population. Over the past five years, an average of more than 72,000 aliens have been arrested annually on drug charges alone.