Recently, I was having dinner with some friends. Various topics of immigration concern came up. One of them was about the amount of crime committed by illegal aliens in particular, but immigrants in general. I pointed out to them that officially, Hispanics are considered white on the FBI’s fingerprint forms. So, if you go by the fingerprints being submitted to the FBI’s center in West Virginia, and not your own lying eyes, you would have the impression that a record number of white people are entering America.

This is the FBI’s code table for filling out race on the FBI cards:

Guidelines for Preparation of Fingerprint Cards and Associated Criminal History Information, Federal Bureau of Investigation, p. 48.

Notice who is considered white. There is no separate category for Hispanic. The first time I filled out a fingerprint card, I marked down “Unknown” for the Mexican guy in front of me. I had to take the forms from the A-File to a supervisor to sign off and when he got to the fingerprint cards the Hispanic supervisor yelled at me “We’re white, you racist!” He wasn’t happy but his outburst caused me to laugh. Neither the supervisor nor the alien were white and we all knew it.

As you look at the table, notice that Middle Eastern is nowhere to be found on it. I was told to mark them down as white too. This gives a very false impression of who is committing crime in the U.S.