Illegal Immigration, Part 2

I can't keep up with all the messages and emails I'm getting about this, so I'm forced to post a general message.

Consuetudo is a universal legal term meaning, to make it snappy, "a law that no one cares about anymore". Illegal immigration is a crime we never gave a damn about until 9/11.

Desuetude (from the French word désuet, outdated) is a doctrine that causes statutes, similar legislation or legal principles to lapse and become unenforceable by a long habit of non-enforcement or lapse of time.

The seminal case under U.S. state law is a West Virginia opinion regarding desuetude, Committee on Legal Ethics v. Printz, 187 W.Va. 182, 416 S.E.2d 720 (1992). In that case, the West Virginia state supreme court held that penal statutes may become void under the doctrine of desuetude if:

* (1) The statute proscribes only acts that are malum prohibitum and not malum in se;
* (2) There has been open, notorious and pervasive violation of the statute for a long period; and
* (3) There has been a conspicuous policy of nonenforcement of the statute.

This holding was reaffirmed in 2003 in West Virginia v. Blake, ___ S.E.2d ____ (W. Va. 2003)

I believe the millions of people who came to the US through our southern border before 2007 should be granted amnesty out of this basic principle. To make it very simple, we've been encouraging illegal immigration for the past 200 years in order to get cheap hamburgers at Mcdonalds; we can't just all of a sudden tell these people we're going to separate them from their families and ignore the fact that we wanted them to come here in the first place.

-Carmelo Modica