Millions of border-jumping criminals with contempt for American immigration law are suffering from anxiety. Why?

Because of you, that’s why.

A Brazilian man who agreed to be identified by his first name initial and last name, Santos, 27, knows well the risks he takes. He can be stopped by the police and sent to court, but what he fears the most is that any encounter with the law can lead to deportation.

And yet he drives.

“I feel like a soldier who has been sent to war and is forced to kill people,” said Santos, who drives with an expired Brazilian driver’s license. “I don’t have a choice.”…

If he sees them, Santos struggles to remain calm. Often he trembles and his hands begin to sweat. His wife scolds him for being nervous, he said, but he can’t help it. Once, a police cruiser followed his car for a few blocks and he thought the moment he has long feared had arrived. He saw himself being handcuffed and sent back to Brazil. As he slowed down, the patrol car passed by him.

“They said, ‘Men don’t cry,’ but that day I cried,” he said…

“When I drive, I feel like an outlaw,” he said in his native Portuguese. “Only when I get off the car, I feel relief.”

I don’t get it. Geraldo Rivera thinks it’s important to make immigration status a factor in setting bail for Class A felonies but not for minor offenses like driving without a license, yet Santos here sure sounds like a flight risk waiting to happen. I wonder why. Meanwhile, unmentioned in the piece, naturally: the body count generated by the judicial system’s “compassionate” refusal to inquire too deeply into immigration status when punishing traffic offenses.

Here’s some video taken by the reporter; it’s completely useless except for the last 20 seconds or so, which go a long way towards illustrating what the Seattle Times’s archbishop of reportage had in mind during his sermon the other day when he called for “sound, facts-based journalism.”

Update: It took a veto from Schwarzenegger in 2004 to stop California from “solving” this problem. The Bushes have also been trying to “solve” it for years now.