Criminal aliens are not as welcome in the United States as they once were. In an effort to salvage its credibility, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) deported over 50,000 illegals with criminal records in fiscal 1997. But in some parts of the country, the new and harder line is softening, for reasons that have nothing to do with the interests of American taxpayers. For instance, Governor George Pataki of New York— a state where 27 percent of the prison population consists of illegal aliens—has now changed his stance on the early release and deportation of these criminals, in accordance with President Clinton’s promise to make things easier for Caribbean countries, whence a disproportionate number of New York’s foreign offenders come.

When Pataki became governor, he sought to grant early release to some of the criminal aliens clogging the state’s jails and to turn them over to the INS for deportation. The state would thereby save millions of dollars and have more room to store its native-born criminals. Pataki’s policy led to a kind of Mariel boat-lift in reverse—the large-scale deportation of hardened criminals to countries ill-prepared to accept them. As the Caribbean Weekly Gleaner complained, it is often the case that “the deportee grew up in North America. . . . When sent back, he has no one to go to, no home to stay in. He is young, homeless, unskilled and unemployed.” And, as Tony Best wrote in the CaribNews, local police in Jamaica and neighboring countries have already blamed the new arrivals for a significant share of the recent crime and violence.

As a result of the uproar among Caribbean leaders, INS and State Department officials agreed at the U.S.-Caribbean Summit held in Barbados last year to change the guidelines for deportations. According to the West Indies-based Caribbean Week, procedures are now in place to give advance warning about deportations of thugs as well as summaries of their criminal histories —a protocol which, given the number of criminals, will undoubtedly slow down the deportation process.

Now hindering the deportation of criminal aliens in New York is Governor Pataki’s decision to grant prosecutors of these aliens more power to decide if early deportation and release are appropriate, meaning criminal aliens would serve out more of their time —in American prisons, of course, at taxpayer expense—before coming up for deportation. There seem to have been two political reasons for his decision. First, Pataki was undoubtedly embarrassed by some high-profile cases in which Israeli and Colombian drug dealers got out of jail after a very short time and got right back into business.

Second, as Irwin Claire, a lawyer who heads the Queens-based Caribbean Immigrant Services, points out, New York is home to an estimated 500,000 to one million Caribbean immigrants who largely agree with the governor’s pro-entrepreneurial values and who helped him win his last election. Many of these immigrants, of course, have families back in the countries being ravaged by the deportees. Another factor, says Claire, is the effect of massive deportation on the tourism industry. Antigua, for instance, depends for its livelihood on an offshore banking sector and a tourism industry. And who owns and operates this tourism industry? Overwhelmingly, American companies. In other words, the early release and deportation of aliens could adversely effect Pataki’s future fundraising campaigns.

Pataki is justly popular as a conservative governor who signed the death penalty back into law. The question is how quickly his popularity will wane if he continues to put his political ambitions, the interests of other countries, and the plight of foreign thugs over the wellbeing of his own state and its citizens.