As I wrote in VDARE a few years ago, in 2006 I served on the jury of a trial in downtown L.A. that sounds like I made it up: an Iranian immigrant used car dealer was so crooked that he'd been banned from the used car racket. So, he started another used car lot, but had his brother-in-law sign all the legal forms claiming to be the sole owner and operator. Then the brains of the operation collected $4 million in sales tax but sent only $2 million on to Sacramento. He used the other $2 million to build a Persian Palace in San Clemente filled with, in the words of South Park in their parody of 300, the kind of gold-plated crap that only a Persian would think is cool. Eventually, state auditors kept asking why the dealership sold all of its used cars for only half the market price, so the Mr. Big fled back to Iran, leaving the brother-in-law to stand trial as the legally responsible party. But the idiots on an L.A. jury, half of them immigrants, couldn't grasp what had happened, so he went free on a hung jury.
That got me to thinking about extradition treaties. The lack of an extradition treaty between the U.S. and the home country of immigrants is an incentive to engage in crime. Not surprisingly, the U.S. can't get crooks back from Iran. But what about other countries that were not always threatening to bomb? So, I looked up which countries America doesn't have an extradition treaty with. (In movies, crooks were always running off to Rio because for a long time Brazil didn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S., but now, apparently, we do.)
From Wikipedia:
The United States maintains diplomatic relations, but does not have extradition treaties with the following countries:
Afghanistan, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Armenia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Central African Republic, Chad, China, Comoros, Congo (Kinshasa), Congo (Brazzaville), Croatia, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Macedonia, Madagascar, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Micronesia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Niger, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé & Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Slovenia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican, Vietnam, and Yemen,.[citation needed] [boldface mine]
Holy cow, no wonder the state is broke. That's like half the non-Mexican population of L.A., and about half the small businessmen.
The U.S. really, really ought to have an extradition treaty with Armenia. America did an excellent job turning the pre-1924 Armenian immigrants into solid citizens, but we're not doing so good with the latest wave of Armenian immigrants. There is plenty of human capital there, but we're just letting them abuse us because, compared to the old days, we are weak and stupid. Letting Armenians run scams in America and then scamper off to Armenia when the heat starts to catch up with them is like having a German Shepherd that's not housebroken.
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It's not just the lack of extradition treaties with the countries you listed, Mr. Sailer. The situation is worsened by those countries with which we do have extradition treaties, but which will not extradite to the US any accused who will be tried for a crime for which US law stipulates the death penalty. Which means that mass-murdering "terrorists (as if we don't know what that word most often means), or drug cartel or gangbanger professional murderers, get to stay out of the reach of US jurisprudence.
Isn't the problem with extradition treaties that they have to be two way? American courts won't allow someone to be extradited to the likes of Vietnam because of the latter's lack of a free judiciary.
This means that Vietnam won't extradite criminals to the US either though.
So where would YOU run if you hit your mother with the frying pan over and over, by accident? Andorra and Montenegro would be my top choices. Also, Kuwait has a high standard of living and has a high demand and high salaries for potential English teachers. It's good to know that I have options.
Parachutes -- we have those.
Slovenia and Croatia are both pretty nice if you've got money, and presumably you would after a life of ripping off Americans. Nice climate, on the Adriatic coastline, leftover Austro-Hungarian culture.
I think France likes to refuse handing over fugitives just to dick with us.
On the other hand, that list suggests we've done a good job with latin america. Hooray for the Monroe doctrine and all that.
Slovenia and Croatia are both pretty nice if you've got money, and presumably you would after a life of ripping off Americans. Nice climate, on the Adriatic coastline, leftover Austro-Hungarian culture.
Yes, but they're EU countries (or about to be, in Croatia's case), so a treaty is probably on the horizon.
um, america can't extradite criminals from mexico. at least i don't think so. what i do know for certain is that it is highly illegal in mexican law for foreigners to come into mexico looking to take some mexican back to another country to be tried for a crime. the national government of mexico may, under extreme circumstances, co-operate in an extradition, but they usually don't.
that's the guaranteed, number 1 thing you can expect mexican criminals to do when the heat gets too hot for them. run back to mexico.
it's one of the reasons, perhaps the main reason, US police forces are instructed that if there's an incident, a car crash for instance, and there is a strong possibility that one of the parties is comprised of border jumpers, then the officer is to decide that the american was at fault, no matter how badly at fault the illegals appear to be.
this is because the police know they can generally count getting the american to pay the fine, get points on their license (the illegals might not even have licenses), show up for court, et cetera. and if the american doesn't do what they're supposed to do the police have a good chance of finding them and hauling their ass to court.
mexicans, they could flee at any moment. not a good chance of getting them to pay a fine, appear in court, et cetera.
i know, because i was railroaded personally by this policy. i got hit by illegal aliens in 2006. they totaled my car and gave me a concussion. costs to me were about $25000, fortunately mostly covered by insurance. the police gave me the $200 ticket for causing a collision, the points on my license, and the court date. the mexicans actually later decided to sue ME, probably after they were convinced by a scummy immigrant ambulance chaser-type attorney, who are common in the mexicanized areas of the US.
But a country can decide to turn over a fugutive to the U.S. anyway.
As you noted, there is no extradition treaty between the U.S. and Indonesia, but the Jakarta regime has and will turn over Americans if it's in the regime's interest, like they did with boy band impresario Lou Pearlman.
The absence of an extradition treaty is no guarantee of anything.
whelp, i just checked out the treaty the US and mexico supposedly have. it exists. an international border also exists between the US and mexico, but neither nation seems particularly concerned with enforcing any laws pertaining to that. it's a safe bet mexico routinely ignores 31 UST 5059 as it ignores just about all other laws relating to human travel across the US-mexico border.
most US politicans at the national level aren't too concerned with enforcing laws of this nature either. not even in their own nation. doubt they could be bothered very often to cite 31 UST 5059 and demand mexico produce any of the thousands of rapists or murderers hiding in mexico. let alone the tens of thousands of grand theft auto suspects. mexicans know all they have to do is steal a car, drive it over the border, and they're safe. the US will never come get them.
i used to regularly drive my own car through the san ysidro border crossing and mexico doesn't even control their side of the border. that is to say, if you're coming from the US, you can drive into mexico at 70 miles an hour without even slowing down. maybe once in a while they start inspecting vehicles inbound, but i've never seen it.
wonderful, wonderful arrangement for boosting cars. running a chop shop in mexico is a great revenue stream!
Vatican? That's handy for priests of a certain sort, then?
"Lou Pearlman"
Hey, that's funny, I was just reading about Lou Pearlman while reading up on Justin Timberlake because he's in the movie "Bad Teacher." Wow, Pearlman has quite a story. This guy was bad news even in the blimp business.
Germany does does extradite it's citizens to the United States, only to EU countries and international courts.
For all you would-be criminal masterminds, I'd check the laws pretty carefully. I think some of those countries (like most of the former Yugoslav states) won't extradite their own citizens, but are fine with extraditing others. Most of them had to pass special exceptions for the war crimes court in the Hague.
israel may as well not have one.
Probably one factor in this is the bleeding heart liberalization of the reins of the US gov't. We have a history of not returning defectors/refugees/political dissidents from countries like Russia,China, etc on the list, whom these countries consider to be criminals, so they extend the same courtesy to us. One can debate about the morality of our decision (at least from our perspective on the issue), but the bottom line is that we are not willing to recognize their sovereignty in regards to their own citizens, so cannot really complain too much when they return the favor.
Montenegro has an amusing combination. They don't extradite citizens for any reason ... and they sell citizenship for $500k. Fun fact of the day: Ex-Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is now Montenegrin (no extra points for guessing the reason for his newfound Balkan patriotism).
In LA, the biggest problem to law and order is that we have an extradition treaty with Mexico, but it requires that the US not apply the death penalty to Mestizo murderers. We have to catch them on US soil to give them the needle. And even when we do catch brown killers in the US, capital punishment is off the table if victim is white and the local jury comprises a significant number of browns.
I like how Sailer continues to prolishly call the U.S. "we", as if the men that now rule this landmass do so with his interests in mind. He probably calls the Rice basketball team "we" too.
Ah, conservatives.
France will extradite non-French fugitives but not French citizens, I believe they had the same policy during the Holocaust.
jody,
Mexico does extradite criminals to the U.S., but there are hassles and conditions. Mexico will not extradite anyone if they may face the death penalty. That's why the first any Mexican murderer does is run to Mexico. He'll get caught, but he won't get the gurney. There are some other strings attached. I believe they even cavil at the thought of life without parole.
This runs into the problem of dual citizenship. Those with it are legally privileged in a way natives are not. A criminal with another citizenship can run off to his home country and enjoy their legal protections as well as ours.
I don't understand why the USA doesn't have extradition treaties with so many countries. Anyone?
Why in the world don't we have extradition treaties with the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, both of which are under the Compact of Free Association with the United States?
Since CA is busy haphazardly freeing its already convicted prisoners, what would it do with the extra prisoners an extradiction treaty would bring?
OT: This begs for the Steve Sailer treatment
MSM and political consultants anguish about how to avoid saying things about Michelle Bachmann that might offend feminists or other women:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/running-against-bachmann-poses-challenges-for-male-rivals/
Off topic:
Daniel Indiviglio is writing about the education bubble. He updated the post in response to commenters mentioning aptitude tests.
“Conducting aptitude tests would certainly be better than forcing people to waste the time and money of college if it's unnecessary,” he agreed.
The Supreme Court should overturn Griggs v. Duke Power, Co, after it overturns Grutter v. Bollinger with Fisher v. Texas.
Is there any rock that could be turned over that wouldn't have this sort of thing under it anywhere in our government?
"Wow, Pearlman has quite a story."
Pearlman, one of the sleaziest guys ever, is Art Garfunkel's first cousin. Such a contrast. Think of that angelic voice.
Brazil is one of the countries that does not extradite its own citizens, but will extradite non-Brazilians (so if you are a Brazilian criminal in the US you can safely flee to Brazil). They are also one of the countries that refuses to extradite anyone to the US if the extraditee is subsject to the death penalty in the US, but that is actually not an absolute impediment to extradition. All the US has to do is offer assurances that the extraditee will not be subject to the death penalty, even if convicted.
How often does the US extradite its own citizens to other countries? Not very often, I hope. The American government ought to give the benefit of the doubt to American citizens accused of crimes by foreign law enforcement. Would the United States allow extradition of an American accused drug dealer to Malaysia, knowing that he might be hanged for something that isn't a capital crime in the USA? Would we send an American to face serious criminal charges in a country where defendants aren't guaranteed the same rights they would have in American courts? I hope the answer is no.
Even if the country in question is Canada, there should still be a high barrier before we turn Americans over to foreign authorities. I assume other countries take the same approach to their own citizens.
As for not extraditing to the US in capital cases, I admire those countries for standing up for their values. In practice, of course, it's sort of a moot point since we execute so few people that the extraditee is likely to die of old age (or prison murder) before the state gets a chance to kill him.
Love that list of countries w/o the extradition treaty with us. Notice how they are all non-white countries.
Conclusion: Race matters (again).
There is a certain amount of annoyance in Britain that we have an wxtradition treaty with you that allows you to extradite virtually anybody for anything but it doesn't work both ways. We have a blogger here who hacked into the CIA to find out about UFOs who would be guilty of a misdeamenour here but is facing forever ion a US prison,
Most of the anger is directed at our own gutless politicos who won't tell you to take a hike.
However I can see that a lot of Americans would object to a reciprocal treaty with Iran. ;-)
Some problems have no complete solutions.
"For all you would-be criminal masterminds, I'd check the laws pretty carefully. I think some of those countries (like most of the former Yugoslav states) won't extradite their own citizens, but are fine with extraditing others. Most of them had to pass special exceptions for the war crimes court in the Hague."
NOooooo! You should've said something before I let my passions take over!
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