Immigration Blog

More on the Environment, Population, Immigration, and the SPLC

By Jerry Kammer, September 16, 2013

Last week this blog noted the work of long-time environmental reporter Tom Horton, an expert on the Chesapeake Bay who wrote for many years at the Baltimore Sun and now writes for the Bay Journal. We cited Horton's projection that the Senate immigration reform bill, if passed, would increase the population of the multi-state Chesapeake Bay watershed to 24 million by 2050, up from the current level of 17 million. Read more...

U.S. & Mexican Scholars Call for "Comprehensive Immigration Enforcement at the Workplace"

By Jerry Kammer, September 13, 2013

One of the most salient features of U.S. immigration policy for more than 35 years has been the inability of Congress and the executive branch to establish an effective, fraud-resistant system to verify that employees are authorized to work here.

That long-running failure — due to resistance from ethnic interest groups, business organizations, and civil libertarians as well as a lack of federal commitment — doomed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Read more...

Tiny Bit of Good News – More Migrants Retiring Overseas, Not Here

By David North, September 12, 2013

The United States is financially better off when people who would probably be eligible for various social benefits — such as Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, SSI, etc. — leave the country. You might call it the emigration of the elderly, something we rarely discuss.

The good news is that the outward movements of such persons have been increasing, albeit slowly, over the last six years. Most of these are foreign-born.

How do we know this? Read more...

Heal Thyself Archbishop – Moral Obligation Is Not a One-Way Street

By Ronald W. Mortensen, September 12, 2013

The Rev. John C. Nienstedt, the Roman Catholic archbishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, asserts that "We have a moral obligation to provide those who have come here [illegally] with an opportunity for full citizenship."

The archbishop's effort to impose a moral obligation on all Americans for the benefit of foreign nationals is nothing new and it is done with a high level of confidence that we will accept yet another moral obligation because of the guilt imposed on us by influential religious, political, media, and civic leaders. Read more...

Cheesecake Factory, Hallmark, Disney, and Others Now Pushing Amnesty

By Jon Feere, September 11, 2013

Officials representing over 100 corporate interests issued a letter to Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) demanding the legalization of 11 million illegal aliens and increased legal immigration through the creation of new visa programs. As these companies put it in their letter:

[W]e strongly support efforts to bolster the availability of a workforce at all skills levels, through a separate visa program as well as by creating a path to legal status for those already here.

Read more...

Who's on First at Homeland Security?

By David North, September 11, 2013

The DHS press release headline says it all:

Statement by Deputy Press Secretary Marsha Catron on Acting Secretary Beers' Upcoming Trip to New York and Italy

Not only is there an acting secretary, there's a deputy press secretary presumably acting for the real press secretary.

But that's not all. Rand Beers, whose continuing title is that of one of the under secretaries of DHS, where he is the ranking anti-terrorism person, is the acting deputy secretary, and, it is because of that role that he — now that Janet Napolitano has left town — is also the acting secretary. Read more...

Statistical Trends that Should Slow Immigration, Don't

By David North, September 10, 2013

There are some significant statistical trends that should indicate a slowing of immigration, but it has not worked that way, certainly not yet.

I am thinking about the birth rate in Mexico — the country that supplies us with the most migrants, legal and illegal; the incidence of marriage in the United States, which supplies a huge percentage of our legal immigration; and finally crime, because under the right circumstances crime, like marriages, can create visas.

Speaking broadly, birth rates in Mexico, the marriage rate in the United States, and crime rates here have all been declining for a number of years. All of those trends should lower migration pressures, but they have not. Let's look at these three variables in turn. Read more...

Immigration and the Chesapeake, and Environmentalists' Failure to Acknowledge the Connection

By Jerry Kammer, September 10, 2013

The Chesapeake Bay has been the center of Tom Horton's long and remarkable career as a journalist and author. Last week he wrote a compelling essay for the Baltimore Sun on the relationship between the health of the bay and the immigration reform bill that passed the Senate in June. Read more...

Wisdom from the Pews

By Mark Krikorian, September 9, 2013

My posting this morning on the fading prospects for amnesty mentioned the Roman Catholic hierarchy's lobbying push, which included instructions that Sunday's sermons were to have focused on immigration. No one I've heard from, at parishes around the country, heard a sermon on immigration or even saw a letter from their bishop on it in their church bulletins. Read more...

Amnesty Slipping Through Their Fingers

By Mark Krikorian, September 9, 2013

They must be cursing Assad at the Chamber of Commerce and La Raza. If only he'd held off gassing his enemies (assuming it was, in fact, him) until after the House passed an immigration bill, it wouldn't have been so bad.
As it is, "Immigration Reform Falls to the Back of the Line," notes today's New York Times: Read more...