One of the reasons ongoing mass immigration is a security problem for a modern society is that it creates and constantly refreshes unassimilated immigrant communities that serve as cover for bad guys, whether transnational terrorists or transnational criminals, whose access to modern technologies of communications, transportation, and weaponry makes the threat different in kind from anything we faced in earlier eras.

An illustration from Sunday's Washington Times: Read more...

I was the keynote speaker at a big naturalization ceremony yesterday at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, Calif. (a really cool art-deco building, at least on the inside; maybe there is some there there after all). I gave a version of my naturalization speech to the nearly 1,000 new citizens, plus maybe 1,500 friends and family, who greeted it with pretty boisterous applause, much more so than at the more sedate ceremonies I've addressed in D.C. and Baltimore. Read more...

Today the Federal Register announced that the agency responsible for securing our borders, Customs and Border Protection, is designating enhanced driver's licenses and identification documents issued by the states of Vermont and Michigan and the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Manitoba, British Columbia, and Ontario as acceptable documents for purposes of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) that goes into effect at land and sea borders on June 1, 2009. Washington State (April 3, 2008) and New York (December 2, 2008) were previously designated as WHTI compliant. These documents may be used to denote identity and citizenship of, as appropriate, U.S. or Canadian citizens entering the United States from within the Western Hemisphere at land and sea ports of entry. Read more...

Chuck Schumer is making a big show of (the Bush administration's!) immigration enforcement successes, arguing, in the words of the Washington Times story, that "lawmakers have proved to the nation that they are serious about security. Now, he said, voters should be ready to accept a law that legalizes illegal immigrants and rewrites immigration rules."

Uh, not yet. First of all, this is a man who tried to filibuster the Secure Fence Act, so the only thing he's serious about is making a political feint to dupe enough of his fellow congressmen into voting for amnesty. Read more...