Secure Communities meets with strange resistance

San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey explained in The Chronicle's Sunday Insight section his opposition to Secure Communities, the federal program that automatically passes new arrestees' fingerprints to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The program applies to "everyone booked into a county jail," Hennessey complained - "even in a minor matter, such as having no driver's license in one's possession in a traffic stop."

To Hennessey and many other "sanctuary city" supporters, a person can break federal immigration law, then violate state driver's license law, but still should escape the legal consequences.

Secure Communities is supposed to address illegal immigration by targeting not all of the estimated 11 million people residing illegally in the United States but only those who present an added risk to the general public by doing something that lands them in jail.

By March 31, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had examined 7.2 million fingerprints, which led to the arrest of 200,000 people and the deportation of 101,741.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledges that not all of the deportees were convicted of the crimes that landed them in local jail, but all were found guilty of violating immigration law.

Liberals should love this program. It has the immigration agency focusing on criminals, not immigrants who otherwise play by the rules. There is no risk of racial profiling - the left's objection to last year's controversial Arizona immigration law. As Gov. Jerry Brown pointed out when he was state attorney general, "Using fingerprints is faster, race neutral and results in accurate information and identification."

The people who are hated in San Francisco are the ordinary, normal, go-to-work producing legal residents that support their families.

San Francisco government employees and criminals (one and the same group) use them as captive victims for revenue and entertainment.

Its not about being kind to the (illegal) immigrants, giving out excessive benefits to homeless or rent control housing. Its about voting blocks and the power of the California 8th Congressional District, currently represented by Nancy Pelosi.

Congressional districts are apportioned by census count of total populations. That includes citizens and non-citizens, eligible to vote and ineligible immigrants and felons. San Francisco had a 2010 census population of 805,000. There were 155,533 voters in a citywide June 2010 elections. In other words, each voter “represented” over 5 San Franciscans. The more non-voters (criminals, illegal immigrants, legal resident aliens, homeless) that can be attracted into a district, the greater the representation ratio. The end result is a tiny voting block of extreme wackos get a permanent seat in the US House of Representatives.

Note: Pelosi’s CA-8th is only about 3/4 of the San Francisco population. Significantly, it excludes the Sunset district, the honest working middle class family area of the city. CA-8th does include the gay Castro district, the very expensive areas around Presidio, and of course, the areas with (non-voting) very high numbers of homeless, illegal, or criminal populations; downtown section, Potrero Hill district, and Mission districts.

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