The Human Face of Illegal Immigration: Drunk Driving Fatalities

This is the first post in a series on the real damage caused by illegal immigration.  First up, here is a video documentary from WRAL.

It is difficult to research this matter, as our government refuses to track these numbers, so reports from different sources are required.  Here is some information from CBS Money Watch.

One such eye-opener appeared as “The hit-kill-and-run state” stories, published in 2005 in the Arizona Daily Star. “The seven states with the highest rates of fatal hit-and-run crashes,” the paper reported, “are also the seven states that have the most illegal immigrants, according to two think tanks.” With 500,000 illegal aliens, or 9 percent of its population, the paper reported, Arizona ranked fifth in that measure behind California, Texas, Florida, and New York. About 5.6 percent of Arizona’s fatal crashes between 1994 and 2004, the newspaper reported, were hit-and-run.

In California, the state with the most illegal immigrants, more than 7 percent of the fatal wrecks were hit-and-run, the Daily Star reported, the highest in the nation. With one million unlicensed drivers., California also boasted the highest number of hit-and-runs of all the states, according to a 2003 San Francisco Chronicle article.

More recent data on California, gleaned from the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System, show that California’s figure for fatal hit-and-runs in 2005 reached 9 percent, or 347 of 3,846 fatal crashes. Arizona’s number stayed the same as its average from 1994 to 2004. The figure for Texas came in at 5 percent, an increase from 4.5 percent. Florida’s figure increased from 4.9 percent to 5.6 percent.

By contrast, the states with the lowest percentage of fatal hit-and-run crashes also had the lowest number of illegals. In Vermont, with 4,000 illegals in 2005, the Federation for American Immigration Reform reports, one of 68 fatal crashes was a hit-and-run. Wyoming, also with 4,000 illegals, posted just one hit-and-run fatality among 147 total, or 0.6 percent. Maine too had just 4,000 illegals. Just one of its 151 fatal crashes was a hit-and-run.

So, there is a pattern here.

More proof that illegal immigrants are lethal drivers is found in the evidence tying unlicensed drivers, who are disproportionately illegal aliens, to traffic fatalities. The American Automobile Association (AAA) published the second of two reports in 2003 documenting that unlicensed drivers are more lethal than licensed drivers. That report, entitled Unlicensed to Kill, The Sequel, used numbers gathered between 1993 to 1999. Unsurprisingly, correlating the AAA data with other figures detailing the number of illegal aliens in a state demonstrates that states with the highest numbers of fatal crashes involving unlicensed drivers correspond to the states with the highest numbers of illegal aliens. In California, with the highest population of illegals, at least 20.9 percent of the drivers in fatal crashes were unlicensed. Arizona’s and New Mexico’s figures were even higher: 21.1 and 23.1. Maine’s figure was just 6.1 percent, Wyoming’s, 11.2 and Vermont’s 13.7.

Law enforcement authorities confirm that unlicensed drivers are disproportionately illegal aliens. According to World Net Daily, a district attorney in New York has reported that at one point, 66 percent of those charged with misdemeanor unlicensed driving were illegals. “Unfortunately,” a highway patrolman in California told WND, “the undocumented drivers here [drive unlicensed] more than the natives.” In short, illegal aliens drive without licenses and cause fatalities in numbers exceeding their proportion of the population.

So, how many are dying here?  Some identify the number in the thousands.  Others would likely deny that it is happening at all.  One thing is obvious; neither political party thought it important enough to collect data so we would know.  For obvious reasons, I would say.  Essentially, we’re getting killed out there, and no one is doing a thing about it.

I wonder what the amnesty crowd has to say about this?  Nothing meaningful, I would imagine.  When they conduct their protests,  and demand that we ignore their disregard for our laws,  just remember that they are grandstanding while US citizens die.

They’ll probably just call me a racist for pointing this out.  So be it.  Then, again, they have to.  They have nothing else, so they have to attack messengers in the hope that the message can be ignored.  It doesn’t seem to be working so well anymore, is it?