Once upon a time, the baroque levels of crime in Latin America was someone one merely read about.

From the "secuestro express;" to "Colombian neckties;" to "pozoleros," to nail traps on the highway to disable a car before a hijacking; to bombs and car bombs; to dead journalists and politicians; to ATM card readers stealing from bank accounts; to gang extortions of small businesses known as "la vacuna;" to dead bodies hanging from freeway overpasses with narco-banners; crime in Latin America has always been nasty and extensive.

With little to no rule of law, defense is a way of life -- from bulletproof cars, to gated communities, to lives that revolve around dinner parties with every guest known; to purses thrown into car trunks to prevent snatch-and-grab robberies by motorcycle thieves at stoplights; to wearing cheap wristwatches to deter snatch thieves; to personal security guards; it doesn't stop.

Official corruption comes with the package, too, from "la mordida" to "plata o plomo" takers of the plata.

One could go there, to places like Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and above all, Venezuela, and learn even more details about crime and defense from crime, but the picture is the same: Most countries in Latin America have or have had horrendous crime; a rule of law deficit that has created a low-trust society, and generally kept the region's spectacular tourism potential to a minimum.

One doesn't want that stuff here, but with Joe Biden's open border, we are getting that stuff here, particularly in California.

In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported this:

She was cruising the high, arcing ramp from the westbound 10 Freeway to the southbound 405 with a large bag of expensive jewelry in the passenger seat.

It was Oct. 18, and jeweler Stacy Nolan Soper was headed home in a rented Nissan Rogue after visiting downtown L.A.’s jewelry district, where she had picked up wares from a handful of businesses.

Traffic slowed as she came down the ramp, and the car in front of her suddenly stopped. A man hopped out. She wondered if he needed help. Then she saw two other men in ski masks jump out after him.

In a sickening flash, Soper realized: “They are coming after me.”

Two of them came to her car’s passenger side and began slashing its tires and smashing the windows. The other man stood at her open window waving something that she didn’t recognize with certainty but may have been a knife.

“It seemed like [he] was going to attack me,” said Soper.

As she looked at him in terror, the others grabbed the jewelry from the passenger seat — worth more than $100,000 — and ran back to their vehicle.

In San Francisco, the Marina Times reported this going on:

Numerous Mission businesses have come to me about Latino Task Force and Calle 24 — extorted, threatened, gang members perched in their doorways — but each time I got close to writing the story the businesses feared retribution and backed out. Hope that changes now. DMs open. https://t.co/SYZXugrdbP

— The Marina Times ⛵️ 🗞️ (@TheMarinaTimes) April 17, 2024

And as I noted earlier, San Diego has become the site for actual Mexican cartel shootouts and gangs dissolving opponents in vats of acid, known as 'stewmakers.'

Let's not forget the professional thieves from Latin America now flying up here as burglary "tourists," conducting cat-burglar robberies of homes for loot to fence. who operate statewide but seem most active in Southern California.

All of these crimes, up until now, have been exclusively seen in Latin America.

What does that say about the picture here that our society is starting to look like what we see south of the border?

It's the consequences of Biden's open border, which is not a vetted immigration as in the past, but now unvetted immigration, taking in all comers, no matter how undesirable, treating all as if they are applicants for driver's licenses.

Number one, this change negates any asylum claims by illegal migrants who say they're coming here to flee from crime, or from gangs extorting them, as many do. In coming illegally, crime has come with them so the gangs are already here and waiting to extort them, too. No advantage there for them with that claim to be fleeing extortion. It's on a par with what economists say, which is that there is no free lunch.

Number two, the quality of our lives goes down too, and it's not just the illegal migrant driving down working class wages that's the problem. It's the emergence of the defensive measures in the absence of a working legal system where laws mean what they say. What emerges from this is the low-trust, low-social capital society of Latin America that U.S. Americans dread. That becomes out new normal because unchecked crime creates suspicion and defensive measures from those walled compounds, to personal security guards, to bulletproof cars and more.

Number three, the situation is not getting better, it's getting worse in fact as Biden's migrant pipeline continues to feed into the states. As it builds up, and crime worsens and grows more outrageous, the next step is that officials grow corrupt or get gunned down as is happening in Mexico, and finally, a low-trust, low social capital society where no one trusts his neighbors is the result.

Victor Davis Hanson has noted in the past that illegal immigration will stop in the U.S. as soon as the U.S. becomes as impoverished and corrupt and crime-infested as the places these migrants leave behind, which sounds like a lousy way to stop illegal migration but that's Democrat policy in action. When the equilibrum is reached, the migration will stop.

That shouldn't be the price we have to pay to stop the waves of illegal migration now rolling through our country in a grand Democrat plan to effectively replace the electorate.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License