Running out of space: Latino gangs swarm Anglo America
It was pretty easy for white liberals to duck to the tidal wave of black crime in the 1960’s and 1970’s. All they had to do was to move away from the urban lawlessness to suburban tranquility. Today’s crime wave is driven by immigrants who do no confine themselves to inner cities. Latin American immigrant criminals are now swarming rural and suburban communities across America, thanks to decades of lax immigration enforcement. The story below is from Northern Virginia, but it doesn’t much matter where you live, some Hispanic gang or another will soon set up shop in your vicinity.
The potentially violent gang argument at South Lakes High School late last month could have been worse.
Classes had just let out for the afternoon and members of two rival street gangs were on the verge of brawling.
A phalanx of police officers rushed to the scene and defused the situation before it escalated, arresting 23-year-old Pedro Perez-Vazquez, who, police said, had facilitated the gang fight and was armed with a concealed knife.
The Nov. 23 incident sheds light on what is considered a growing and challenging problem for Reston — the rise of violent street gangs among the community’s poor and immigrant populations.
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Law enforcement agencies estimate there are roughly 400 gangs throughout Northern Virginia, though MS-13 is responsible for more than 95 percent of all gang-related crime, including armed robberies, thefts, car thefts, drug dealing, rapes, shootings and assaults, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report obtained by the Connection.
With an estimated 30 individual cliques and 3,000 members, MS-13 is believed to be the largest gang in Northern Virginia and in Reston specifically. The Los Angeles-based gang is linked to more than half a dozen slayings throughout the region.
As always, the proposed solution to immigration problems is more public spending:
Existing after-school programs fail to draw sufficient numbers of young Latino immigrants, Larson said. Latino children and teenagers in Reston are often unsupervised in the afternoon because many of their parents work two or three jobs.
More relevant, effective after-school programs are needed and may be on the way, said School Board Member Stu Gibson (Hunter Mill). Next year’s school budget contains $1 million to expand after-school programs for middle school students.
“We need a positive alternative to gang life,” Gibson said. “That’s how we’re going to get to the root of this problem.”GANGS HAVE been known to recruit children in Reston’s elementary schools as early as fourth grade.
Impoverished recent immigrants, frequently from South and Central America, are most often targeted for recruitment. Gangs lure children with promises of excitement, along with a sense of belonging and money for food, rent and clothing.
“As long as you’ve got big economic disparities — when you’ve got an underclass of people, like we do in Reston — you’re always going to have gangs,” Larson said. “People are in gangs because the community is failing them.”
Well , the only reason that Latin America’s underclass is here is because America let it in - and that is the real failure.
But, what the hell, as long as Wal-Mart gets an endless supply of cheap workers, what’s there to complain about, right?
