A non-criminal removal is simply removing someone from the country that has no criminal record and is an 'alien'.
As soon as you commit a crime (and are convicted) you are subject to a criminal removal. The main issue seems to be that criminal removals are procedurally expensive, they take a lot longer and cost more dollars than a non-criminal removal. Having appealed or not is not really a factor here because some people that let their visa expire never went through the appeals process, they just disappeared underground or were forgotten for a long long time. Technically they have no right to be where they are, in practice they're just like everybody else minus the right to vote and the right to social security, and possibly health care issues.
In order to boost the numbers the agencies decided that non-criminal removals are the low hanging fruit that they can use to boost their numbers significantly while cutting costs. After all, it's a lot easier to pick up a hard working guy/girl and their family than it is to go after someone that is aware he's being looked for.
In plenty of cases these people are not just productive members of society, but they also have had children in the long time since they landed and the present, which rips these families apart.
This is the most stunning example of short-sighted behavior by officials that I've ever seen because they effectively shifted their priorities from removing undesirables to removing their polar opposites, the productive, if possibly undocumented members of society.
What is sad is that it takes high profile cases such as these to bring this strategy to light, for every well connected person that comes up in this dragnet of stupidity there are 100's if not 1000's of nobodies that are just as important to the functioning of society and whose lives and well being are not worth less than any other persons.
As soon as you commit a crime (and are convicted) you are subject to a criminal removal. The main issue seems to be that criminal removals are procedurally expensive, they take a lot longer and cost more dollars than a non-criminal removal. Having appealed or not is not really a factor here because some people that let their visa expire never went through the appeals process, they just disappeared underground or were forgotten for a long long time. Technically they have no right to be where they are, in practice they're just like everybody else minus the right to vote and the right to social security, and possibly health care issues.
In order to boost the numbers the agencies decided that non-criminal removals are the low hanging fruit that they can use to boost their numbers significantly while cutting costs. After all, it's a lot easier to pick up a hard working guy/girl and their family than it is to go after someone that is aware he's being looked for.
In plenty of cases these people are not just productive members of society, but they also have had children in the long time since they landed and the present, which rips these families apart.
This is the most stunning example of short-sighted behavior by officials that I've ever seen because they effectively shifted their priorities from removing undesirables to removing their polar opposites, the productive, if possibly undocumented members of society.
WP article about this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03...
What is sad is that it takes high profile cases such as these to bring this strategy to light, for every well connected person that comes up in this dragnet of stupidity there are 100's if not 1000's of nobodies that are just as important to the functioning of society and whose lives and well being are not worth less than any other persons.