Immigration Blog

Immigration Reform in the National Interest: A Political, Not a Substantive, Process

By Stanley Renshon, April 30, 2013

At its core, the fundamental problem of the Gang of Eight's legislation is that it thinks it has arrived at the country's national interest by a secret process of narrow-gauge bargaining among special interests. It has not.

Large businesses want a reliable supply of cheap labor beyond the one million-plus new immigrants that the country already admits every year. So they bargain for tens of thousands more low-skill "guest workers". There is however, nothing temporary about these workers since they will be able to apply for green cards. Read more...

Big IT Companies Seek to Deny Indian Firms Many H-1B Visas

By David North, April 30, 2013

It's fun watching those exploitative H-1B employers fight …

Not the government;

Not the workers; but

Each other!

Normally, big business interests using foreign worker programs to lower wages and displace resident workers do so in harmony with each other; they unite to keep the workers in check and to fend off government regulations. And when they are all using the same program, they tend to move in lock-step with each other. Read more...

What Back Taxes?

By Jon Feere, April 30, 2013

For months now, the "Gang of Eight" senators, President Obama, and the lobbyists who helped craft the Schumer-Rubio bill have been justifying amnesty by assuring skeptics that illegal immigrants applying for legal status would be required to pay back taxes on money earned during the years they lived illegally in the United States.

Except the actual bill does not require the payment of back taxes. Read more...

Comprehensive Immigration Reform Talking Point of the Week: "We Need to Know Who They Are"

By W.D. Reasoner, April 29, 2013

Both Republicans and Democrats alike seem to be rallying round the same talking point when referring to "comprehensive immigration reform" in the wake of the Boston bombings — something along the lines of "we need to press forward; we'll be better off knowing who all these people are."

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), member of the Gang of Eight, has taken that line, as explained by Jon Feere in his April 26 blog for the Center. Read more...

Immigration Reform in the National Interest: Immigration Ideals and Grand Bargains

By Stanley Renshon, April 29, 2013

One question before the American people is whether the legislative substance of what the "Gang of Eight" has presented lives up to its loftily stated ideals.

The sentiments are stirring, and beyond reproach. Who could be against securing "the sovereignty of the United States of America"? Who would oppose keeping "our country safe and prosperous"? And what critic of the current immigration system would rail against "establishing a safe, just, and efficient immigration system"? Read more...

Some Illegals to Get Legal Status after Only Four Months in the U.S.

By David North, April 29, 2013

An illegal alien, with the right work history, would not even need to be in the United States when he applies for legal status under one provision of the Gang of Eight's big immigration bill, S.744.

The same alien could get legal status even though his entire life experience in the United States consisted of a single four-month visit.

Are these rules set up for Nobel Prize winners? It might make sense for them. Read more...

The President's Laugh Line: The Joke's on MSNBC

By Jerry Kammer, April 29, 2013

If you believe that reporters need to play it straight with their reporting and pundits have an obligation to rise above cheap disdain toward those with whom they disagree, you can only shake your head at MSNBC's coverage of the immigration policy debate. Read more...

High DACA Approval Rate Raises Amnesty Questions

By Jessica Vaughan, April 26, 2013

Statistics from U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) indicate that the agency is rubber-stamping the applications for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. They report that 99.5 percent of applicants have been approved, which is well above approval rates for other legal programs, which have fraud and rejection rates in the double digits. Read more...

DACA: Prosecutorial Discretion ... or Egregious Abuse of Discretion?

By W.D. Reasoner, April 26, 2013

As probably most readers of the Center's website know, a federal lawsuit was filed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in a challenge to the Obama administration's end run around Congress when it refused to move forward with DREAM Act legislation, and instituted instead an administrative deferred action program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or "DACA") under the guise of its Department of Homeland Security's "prosecutorial discretion" policies.

Many people (myself among them) believe that the program is both unconstitutional, because it infringes on the lawmaking prerogative unique to Congress under the separation of powers, and illegal, because it is not an act of prosecutorial discretion, but rather an abuse of discretion. Read more...

Wanted: More Reporting on K Street's Influence

By Jerry Kammer, April 26, 2013

The Hill, the Capitol Hill newspaper, has noted in an editorial that the new immigration reform bill was produced by a "bipartisan group of eight senators [who claim it] will both secure the border and create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants." The paper said that accomplishment "follows months of difficult negotiations in which the Gang of Eight sought to address weaknesses that have killed prior immigration bills."

True enough, as far as it goes. But there has been little reporting on efforts to shape the bill for purely commercial purposes. The public needs to understand what is being done along the axis of influence that ties K Street and Capitol Hill. There, dozens of lobbyists are representing the interests of a myriad of employers who want to shape the bill to suit their purposes. They also perform the complementary duty of raising money for the politicians whose opinions they seek to shape — and for whom many of the lobbyists previously worked. Read more...