View the Center's new report concerning Rick Perry's claims on job growth.

1. Rick Perry under fire
2. Bill faces tough road
3. Perry defends tuition
4. Imm. ad airs during debate
5. Sec. Commu. under fire

1.
Rick Perry Takes Hits in GOP Debate
By Kenric Ward
Sunshine State News, September 22, 2011
Around the State

Presidency 5 DebateNine candidates for the Republican nomination for president take the stage to debate Thursday night in Orlando.Hide

On the day a Quinnipiac poll showed Rick Perry leading the GOP pack in Florida, but Mitt Romney beating President Obama in a general-election matchup, the two Republican front-runners sparred over conservative credentials Thursday night at a Fox News debate in Orlando.

Perry poked Romney over softness or contradictions in the former Massachusetts governor's positions on health-care reform and taxes. Echoing previous encounters, Perry accused Romney of flip-flopping on issues.

But Perry took heavy fire -- and a few boos -- on immigration. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Romney variously hammered the Texas governor for opposing construction of a border fence while awarding in-state tuition to illegal aliens.

"Governor Perry supports national health insurance [spanning] the U.S. and Mexico border," Santorum said in a caustic exchange with Perry. "Even Barack Obama wouldn't propose that,"

Not disputing that point, Perry again found himself on the defensive over his state's law that allows illegal aliens to take advantage of tuition discounts for in-state students.

"I don't think you have a heart [if you oppose it]," he said to a mixture of cheers and catcalls.

Undercutting Perry's claims to economic success -- and further eroding his standing on the immigration issue -- the Center for Immigration Studies reported that only 20 percent of the new jobs in Texas under his administration have gone to native-born Americans in the state.

With Romney widening his lead in the New Hampshire polls, Florida appears to be a must-win for Perry. But the audience of nearly 5,000 Presidency 5 delegates and registered guests did not appear any more enthusiastic toward Perry than to the other eight candidates on the stage at the Orange County Convention Center.
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http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/rick-perry-takes-hits-gop-debate

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2.
House immigration status-check bill faces tough road
By Alan Gomez
USA Today, September 23, 2011

The House Judiciary Committee this week passed a Republican-sponsored bill that would require private businesses to use a federal program that checks the immigration status of all job applicants.

Rep. Lamar Smith says critics are wrongly calling E-Verify a jobs-killer when it should be viewed as a job creator for legal Americans.

The bill, the most sweeping piece of immigration legislation moving through Congress, will have a hard time getting through the full House of Representatives, let alone passing the Democrat-controlled Senate and getting a signature from President Obama.

The bill passed the committee 22-13 on a party-line vote, with no Democrats voting in favor.

At a time when House Republicans are pushing a job-creating, regulation-slashing agenda, Democrats say the immigration verification program, called E-Verify, will cost hundreds of thousands of Americans their jobs, and impose another, expensive layer of regulation on struggling U.S. businesses.

"Solutions should not be worse than the problems they purport to solve," said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich.

Even some Republicans worry about the impact a nationwide E-Verify program would have on the economy. Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said the agricultural industry would lose thousands of workers who couldn't be replaced without an accompanying guest-worker program that would allow foreign nationals to work American fields.

"I'm absolutely convinced that without a fix for agriculture, (E-Verify) will not get to the House floor," Lungren said.

A Bloomberg Government report found that small businesses would have to spend $2.6 billion a year to use the program.

E-Verify is free to use, but the report found that businesses would have to train human resources officers, purchase computers and Internet access and hire personnel to oversee the screenings.
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-09-22/House-immigrati...

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3.
Perry defends in-state tuition for undocumented
The Associated Press, September 22, 2011

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is defending his record on immigration during a Republican debate, saying people who don't support education benefits for the children of illegal immigrants are heartless.

Perry has faced criticism from his Republican rivals on immigration since entering the presidential campaign in August. He says Texas has spent millions to secure its border with Mexico, and he supported Arizona's tough immigration law.

Texas universities allow the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates. Perry pushed back hard against his rivals, holding tightly to his position that illegal immigrants should be educated.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jWuO8Na6bueWqyixM-qSKT...

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4.
Ad targeting legal immigration to air during GOP debate
By Josh Lederman
The Hill (DC), September 22, 2011

Viewers watching Thursday's GOP presidential debate on Fox News will hear lots from the candidates about why Social Security needs to be fixed, why taxes can't be raised and why President Obama needs to go.

During a commercial break, they'll hear why legal immigration needs to be restrained.

The anti-immigration group NumbersUSA plans to air an ad nationally during the debate, arguing that those coming to the United States legally are taking jobs away from Americans.

"Should Congress give work permits to 1 million new legal immigrants again this year, when 20 million Americans of all colors, national origins and religions are having trouble finding jobs?" ask the speakers in the ad.

Of the 10 concerned-looking people in the ad, at least half appear to be non-Caucasian or Hispanic.

"By having lots of nationalities in there, we're trying to take ethnicity off the table," said Roy Beck, the founder of NumbersUSA. "We chose our name because we knew that too many people on both sides of the issue got sidetracked on who immigrants are."

Beck said that's what has scared politicians off in the past from addressing the country's immigration levels, adding that the timing of the ad was intended to encourage the GOP candidates to focus more on jobs than they have in previous debates.
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http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/campaign-ads/183357-ad-targeting-leg...

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5.
Homeland's screening policy of illegal immigrants flawed
By Alan Gomez
USA Today, September 22, 2011

A program that checks the immigration status of all people booked into local jails needs systemwide changes and may need to be suspended until its problems are worked out, according to a review conducted by the Department of Homeland Security's advisory council.

Protesters with Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) rally against the Secure Communities program on Aug. 15 in Los Angeles.

The program, called Secure Communities, allows Homeland Security to review the fingerprints of people arrested by state and local law enforcement agencies against federal immigration databases.

The program has been criticized because some people arrested for minor crimes, or on charges that are later dropped, are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, sometimes resulting in deportation.

That runs contrary to Homeland Security's stated goals of concentrating on illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes or pose a threat to national security.

"The apparent 'disconnect' between the Homeland Security documents describing a tight focus on dangerous criminal offenders and the actual operation of Secure Communities has led to criticism of the program and is a key reason for opposition to the program in a number of cities, counties and states," says the report, which was approved by the advisory council Thursday.
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-09-22/immigration-Hom...