Courts in California are facing an interpreter shortage, given the 220 languages spoken among the system's defendants, witnesses, and accusers.  It raises the question: who let these people in, and why are we paying for this?

If there's one reason not to let unvetted immigrants with no language skills into the U.S., it's got to be in the translation services these people require once they find themselves in the dock.

Courts in the state are being asked to find translators for languages such as Mixtec, Malayalam, Telugu, Wu, Hakka, Xiang, Kannada, Tarasco, Uzbek, Maithili, Oromo, Cebuano, Bhojpuri, Pashto, Igbo, and other languages not spoken with any frequency inside the U.S.  According to the Los Angeles Times:

At least 220 languages are spoken in California, and 44% of residents speak a language other than English at home. Seven million Californians say they cannot speak English well.

On top of that, California's court system is considered the largest in the nation, surpassing in size the entire labyrinth of federal courts.

Just finding enough trained interpreters has proved daunting. The state's courts handle as many as eight million cases a year.

Now two years into its enforcement phase, California's "language access plan" is pushing courts to provide interpreters for all non-English speakers in all cases.

That's gonna cost.  And that money is going to come from some other fund.  One wonders if the beleaguered courthouse building funds, which have been mismanaged severely, are going to take another hit to pay for all these translators for all of these miscreants and jackpot justice hunters.

The state is under federal orders to deliver up the translation services for all comers, free of charge to them.  Sure, some are innocent witnesses, others are actual victims, and perhaps those categories shouldn't be forced to pay.  But there also are some participants who ought to be obliged to pay – namely, criminals and initiators of junk suits thrown out of court.

Since that's never going to happen, and the "free" translation services for all 220 languages spoken in California are going to prevail, the question that should be asked is why this many people with no English language skills are being allowed into the U.S. at all.  Plenty are here illegally, and that testifies to President Obama's failure to enforce immigration laws.  Others are simply being let in as refugees from round-heeled consular officers and United Nations do-gooder refugee agencies without regard for whether these people can adapt here and stay out of trouble, which, obviously, if they are in the dock, they cannot.

If there's one more reason to reform immigration laws, it's these translation costs for miscreants, the absence of which often forces courts to let them walk free.  In 2007, a child-molester from Liberia walked free because a Maryland court couldn't find a translator who could service the defendant in his native Vai dialect.

Can there be a bond system for migrants coming here to force them to pay for their own translators?  Such an incentive might drive some to learn English.  Can there be an English requirement for getting residency in the first place?  Can there at long last be enforcement of our border?

Whatever the solution, it needs to be driven home to migrant activists and others that illegal and unchecked immigration costs a lot more than just deportation costs.  For all these monstrous translation costs, it's time to quit letting non-English-speaking miscreants into the U.S. in the first place.