The illegal immigrant sex crime problem the media is ignoring

Democrats don’t want children to be separated from child molesters at the border.

The requirement of “good moral character” in order to be naturalized as a citizen is as old as our first naturalization laws in 1790 and colonial laws before the Founding. The understanding was that although we are stuck with a lot of terrible natural-born Americans among the many terrific citizens, we should never choose to add new citizens who do not possess good moral character, given that allowing immigration is optional. The country only wanted “reputable and worthy characters” who were “fit for the society into which they were blended,” in the words of Rep. Theodore Sedgwick during the crafting of the Naturalization Act of 1790.

Obviously, one of the most important areas where this applies is in keeping out criminals who prey on the most vulnerable: children. Yet not only are we refusing to turn back unvetted illegal immigrants, among whom we know there are many criminals who already have records, our government is incentivizing these very people to use young children as tickets into our country. It’s truly hard to comprehend keeping such an evil policy that disregards the safety of Americans as well as the safety of immigrant children, but it is sold as the height of compassion.

The reports from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and from ICE of arresting illegal aliens both at the border and all over our communities on child sex charges are not random happenstance. If I were to drop every other issue I focus on, I could spend every hour focusing on a new case and still not make a dent in the number of illegal alien child sex offense cases that are out there.

One report from only 30 percent of North Carolina counties found that in just the past 18 months, more than 331 illegal aliens have been charged with 1,172 child rapes and child sexual assaults. Just one year’s arrests by ICE’s small forces netted illegal aliens who were charged with a total of 6,888 “sex offenses,” 5,350 “sexual assaults,” and 1,739 “commercialized sexual assaults.”

Some of this is culturally cultivated, from areas where sex with teenagers is not viewed as something criminal or wrong, but is often the regular practice. According to data from Girls Not Brides, a global nonprofit against child marriage, the child marriage rates for girls in Latin American countries from which we are seeing an uptick in illegal immigration are particularly high:

Nicaragua – 41%

Honduras – 34%

Guatemala – 30%

El Salvador – 25%

But when you focus on the people who are actually coming to the border, the numbers are starker. The rates vary dramatically between the urban areas and the poor rural areas, especially in countries like Guatemala.

According to GirlsNotBrides, “Child marriage tends to happen more in rural areas than in urban areas,” and in Guatemala, “over half of rural girls (mostly from Mayan indigenous populations) are married before 18.” They also note that “poverty can also drive child marriage in the region” and therefore, “Indigenous girls living in impoverished areas can be especially vulnerable to the practice.”

The report further observes that “trends over the past 30 years have shown” that Latin America and the Caribbean “is the only region not to see a significant change in rates of child marriage.”

So, who is having sex with a 14- or 15-year-old girl? Is it a 15-year-old boy?

“In Central America, the average [age] difference is 5 to 7 years, a significant gap given the girls’ young ages and the power difference between teenagers and people in their twenties.”

This shows the culture of relatively older men having sex with young girls. Remember, government officials have already said that these migrants are coming from the poorest areas of rural Central America, without sanitary conditions and health care. What comes along with that demographic is child sex. Many of those coming to the border speak indigenous languages and don’t even understand Spanish. It’s certainly not the wealthy and educated who are coming north.

While we feel terrible for billions of people living in very primitive cultures and subpar conditions throughout the globe, we must not be naive about the problems of some of those cultures that run counter to the universal values of even this divided country. None of us want to bring child sex predators into the country.

Liberals will kick, scream, and name-call over making this commonsense observation, but in any context other than illegal immigration, nobody would have a problem pointing this out. When it comes to helping people in those countries, everyone will readily publicize all of the cultural, fiscal, health, and criminal problems endemic to the areas. Yet the minute the discussion turns to transplanting hundreds of thousands of them over a short period of time to our country, suddenly those problems are ignored, and one who points them out is called a racist.

Just last month, a Guatemalan who was released into the country three months ago was charged in Alabama for sexually assaulting a minor under the age of 12. Given the daily cases we see at the border and the interior, how many more will we see in the coming years as a result of this wave?

Our laws on the books since the 1880s were designed to keep out values not supported by the nation. Prostitutes were inadmissible, as well as polygamists, who are still barred from entry to this day (8 US Code 1182(a)(10)(A)). We really need to think twice about the tipping point were “compassion” is really cruelty.