Not quite like getting away with murder, but close enough.  If someone smuggled 500 pounds or less of marijuana into the U.S., or if firearms for violent drug cartels where smuggled from America into Mexico, chances are that U.S. attorneys will decline prosecuting.

The policy of the Bush administration was to trade the prosecution of such “petty” crimes with border crossings, dealing with the “far more dangerous scourge of immigration”.

“Immigration prosecutions in September 2008 represent an increase of over seven hundred percent (700%) from the same month seven years ago,” according to Syracuse University TRAC center which monitors the activities of the Federal Justice System.

Consecrating efforts and resources to immigration came at a cost for America.  White-collar crime prosecutions are down 15% from the levels of the Clinton administration and narcotic filings “also have slumped during the Bush years” by 20% according to the same report.

The diverting of FBI agents “from investigating white collar criminals, corrupt officials and civil rights violators,” according to the Syracuse University study was systematically carried out during the Bush administration by assigning them to “highly classified responsibilities aimed at fighting terrorism”.

Such emphasis by the Bush administration resulted in “siphoned resources from other crimes, eroded morale among federal lawyers and overloaded the federal court system,” reported the New York Times while quoting many federal judges and prosecutors.

Clamping down on cheap labor rather than combating drugs and firearms trafficking evidences a philosophy of life little discussed.  If our money [read government resources] is where our mouth is by combating immigrants, or if our money is positively taken away from combating drugs and the wholesale of arms to violent drug cartels in Mexico, could it just be we are fairly content with this state of affairs?

In its final weeks to ensure another blow to immigrants the Attorney General declared that immigrants, asylum seekers, and all others in removal proceedings, according to him, do not have any right under statute or the Constitution to representation by a lawyer before they can be ordered deported.

We cannot help feeling mystified when a week later during his last press conference, George Bush pleaded with the Republican Party to show more compassion and become more open minded towards immigrants.

A doped nation on one hand and a profitable American firearms trade with Mexican drug cartels on the other, speaks volumes of what may be considered a very acceptable trade meanwhile the full might of the law is brought down upon hapless immigrants.