The recently released Pew report on the decline of the illegal population in the United States as garnered a lot of attention, though a great deal of it for the wrong reasons. Obama administration officials are already touting their policies to account for the decline. Read more

The New York Times says it's "conveniently timed to sprinkle gasoline on the fires of the immigration debate." Get ready for some talk-show rumbling as "Machete" splashes its gore across movie screens starting this weekend. Here are excerpts from five reviews: Read more

1. DOJ sues AZ co. sheriff
2. Senate candidates debate
3. Pew report confirms CIS
4. 'Birth tourism' not norm
5. SB1070 mandates E-Verify Read more

I recently came across a paper by University of Colorado philosophy professor Michael Huemer entitled "Is There a Right to Immigrate?" Huemer's answer is clearly "yes," there is such a right. By a "right to immigrate" he means the right to enter another country of one's choosing, rather than just a right to leave one's country. While only a tiny share of the American people would agree with Mr. Read more

The new report from the Pew Hispanic Center is certain to be widely discussed and widely misunderstood. The report delivers the conclusion most likely to be quoted in its title, "U.S. Unauthorized Immigration Flows Are Down Sharply Since Mid-Decade." Read more

The San Francisco Chronicle reported today that ICE is going all wobbly in defending Secure Communities, its marquee program for identifying and removing criminal aliens. Read more

It was probably a coincidence, but two quite different studies of alien populations were issued within 24 hours of each other, each showing that migrants appear to be less interested in the U.S. than formerly.

The more numerically significant of the two, the report of the Pew Hispanic Center, as noted in a posting by Mark Krikorian, estimated that the number of illegal aliens in the country had dropped to 11.1 million from 12.0 million two years earlier. That's a decrease, over two years, of 7.5 percent. Read more

"Immigration Reform or More Massacres."

That's the provocative headline of today's column in the Mexican daily Reforma by Jorge Castaneda, who as Mexico's foreign secretary from 2000 to 2003 pushed the Bush administration to pass "comprehensive immigration reform" legislation. He is now Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. Read more

1. Poll: AZ for enforcement
2. Pew confirms CIS numbers
3. Report claims assimilation
4. AZ hawks reap benefits
5. ICE mulls San Fran request Read more

A slew of news stories today about a new report from the Pew Hispanic Center estimating that as of March 2009, the illegal population had dropped to 11.1 million. Pew, though institutionally inclined toward amnesty and mass immigration, does honest work, and this is no exception. But many of the press reports are treating this as momentous, previously unknown news when, in fact, it's already been reported — twice. Read more

An arm of the Department of Homeland Security is apparently paying some subdued, indirect attention to the 14th Amendment controversy – should "anchor babies" be allowed, as they are now, to become citizens at birth?

It has issued a somber message to pregnant alien women thinking about coming to this country. (For more on the birthright citizenship controversy see the new Backgrounder by my colleague Jon Feere.) Read more

1. Suit against SB1070 dismissed
2. FL GOP candidate urged to drop issue
3. NY advises schools to ignore status
4. AZ sheriff indifferent to U.N. probe
5. MD county nixes AZ-style proposal Read more

The police union in Houston, a former sanctuary city, is taking a look at the experience of Phoenix, which two years ago implemented a policy to allow its officers to call ICE to report suspected illegal aliens who were connected to other crimes. The implementation of this policy, which is similar to the one signed into law by Arizona governor Jan Brewer and later blocked by U.S. Read more

"A new form of migration much more elitist and selective, but migration in the end, has been taking place for months in various zones in the north of the country, especially the border states," writes columnist Salvador Garcia Soto in today's edition of the Mexican daily El Universal. "The narco violence, the lack of security, and the misgovernment in these places is pushing out entire families of Mexicans who have changed their residence and their activities to various cities of the United States." Read more

1. Obama will not address issue
2. Federal agents frustrated
3. New suit challenges AZ
4. DHS to begin UAV flights
5. Nat'l Guard arrives in AZ Read more

The often brutal mistreatment suffered by Central American migrants passing through Mexico on their way to the United States is receiving increased attention in that country following the discovery last week of the bodies of 72 migrants who had been gunned down. The victims were reportedly murdered by one of the criminal gangs involved in the trafficking of both drugs and human beings. Read more

1. Young workers displaced
2. Nat'l Guard begins deployment
3. Admin uses backlog as pretense
4. Democratic Senator: No amnesty
5. Costs may curtail enforcement Read more

If you wanted to show the public that you mean business, and you're the nation's immigration enforcement agency, maybe you'd want to show some real results. Maybe you'd keep producing real results in a sustained manner. Maybe you'd think, "Hey, if we really, truly start enforcing the immigration laws and drop this de facto amnesty stuff, the public might be convinced that we're sincerely trying to do the job we're sworn to do." Read more

The newly issued 2009 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics provides some useful insights into how our government deals with immigrants, while simultaneously not providing some badly needed policy-relevant data. Read more

If there's any doubt that the Obama administration is running headlong away from immigration enforcement and toward de facto amnesty, it will disappear with a quick review of the latest evidence. Read more

Linda Chavez's new column laments John McCain's flip-flopping on immigration:

McCain's capitulation to what he once called, in my presence, "a strong nativist tendency" fooled no one. It simply besmirched his honor and dignity.

I don't believe that he’s changed either, though after nearly 30 sanctimonious, bullying years in Congress I don't think "honor" and "dignity" are relevant descriptions for him any longer. She also writes: Read more

1. ICE under faces conflicts
2. Admin gutting enforcement
3. India irked by visa costs
4. Gov Brewer files brief
5. NE court to mull policy Read more

It has been known along the southern border for decades that some birth certificates, particularly in rural areas, were both suspect and likely to be used in U.S. passport applications.

Not all midwives and rural county clerks were beyond suspicion.

But what better way for illegal aliens, usually of Mexican extraction, to obtain instant legalization than to obtain State Department-issued U.S. passports? Read more

A Jesuit priest who has long denounced the Mexican government for failing to protect Central American migrants from abuses on their way northward has rejected official statements of outrage at the massacre of 72 migrants in the northern border state of Tamaulipas. Read more

The philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn revolutionized his field with the 1962 publication of a seminal book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. In it he argued that science, no less than other forms of human effort, proceeded on the basis of its own received beliefs. These beliefs formed the foundation of what was deemed acceptable scientific practice and provided as well the basic framework for examining science's results. Read more

1. Feds turn screws on Arpaio
2. Analysis: McCain faces choice
3. TX keeps details undisclosed
4. AZ issue could be decisive
5. FL primary swayed on issue Read more

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, a specialist in German public opinion research, published a book in 1984 with the University of Chicago Press, entitled The Spiral of Silence. In it, she tried to understand why ordinary Germans had not been more vocal in their opposition to the gradual rise and consolidation of Hitler's regime. Read more

The latest installment in the Obama administration's gutting of immigration enforcement was reported today in the Houston Chronicle. As reporter Susan Carroll wrote:

The Department of Homeland Security is systematically reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal records, according to several sources familiar with the efforts.

1. Admin sabotaging prosecutions
2. DHS reneges on exit program
3. GOP chair drops AZ law
4. McCain reclaims confidence
5. List outs amnesty "roadblocks" Read more

It is easy to get into trouble when you divide this vast, diverse country into two dichotomous parts and claim that distinction explains something enormously significant. Read more