The wallet- sized cards are typically used by Mexicans who make short trips into the United States for business or social purposes. Each contains a photo, as well as fingerprint data that can be accessed through a computerized strip. This is the first armed heist of a shipment of the tamper-resistant laser visas since the cards were introduced in Tijuana in 1998, said U.S. Consulate spokeswoman Lorena Blanco. The INS had figured the number of illegal aliens as 6 million. Scholars at Northeastern University are now suggesting that the actual number might run as high as 13 million.
Several facts point toward there being far more illegals than had been previously admitted.
A year ago, the Census Bureau expected to count about 275 million residents of the US on Census Day, April 1, 2000. Instead, it found 281.4 million. This, by the way, is an unadjusted number based on the raw count. A sizable fraction of the undercount would consist of people, such as illegal aliens, who don't want the government to find them. If the story of America is one in which rising minority groups eventually seize control of local political office, Los Angeles may well be its latest chapter.