I'm wrong about what, exactly? I never claimed that not enforcing petty crimes wouldn't make a difference, that seems to be a strawman of what I stated that you felt you could knock down.
Instead, I pointed out that the vast majority of Americans break traffic laws (and any number of other laws) with seeming impunity. Yet the vast majority of those citizens don't break more serious laws -- they don't commit serious crimes.
It was your claim that illegal aliens are more likely to break the law simply because they already broke the law to get here. My point was merely if breaking the law made you likely to break more serious laws, then most every American would have been at least charged with a major crime. More to the point, as others have pointed out here,
the facts don't back your claim. Instead, we find that illegal aliens commit serious crimes at a much lower rate than people here legally.
To go back to your strawman, I actually support the idea of being more aggressive in prosecuting "petty" crimes. Respect for the law seems to be something many (or even most) Americans seem to have lost in my lifetime -- at least partially because of how the law seems to be randomly applied, rather than consistently enforced.
As for illegal immigration, I do think it should be enforced but that Trump is wrong in how to go about it. What we need to do is remove the incentive for illegal immigrants to come (remember the part about Americans frequently breaking the law by hiring illegal immigrants). We should require businesses, and even individuals looking to hire someone, to use
e-Verify -- to verify the person is legally allowed to work in the US. If illegal immigrants can't find work, they aren't going to be risking their lives (and the little money they have) to come to the United States.
