The Obama administration's new administrative amnesty apparently directs ICE to wait until an illegal alien commits a serious crime or two before considering deportation. Similarly, according to the administration's latest 287(g) enforcement scheme, Americans must fall victim to "murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and/or kidnapping" before the alien perpetrator becomes a high priority for deportation. Read more...

Temple U. law professor (and CIS Fellow) Jan Ting – one of the few in his field to recognize the problems created by Obama's administrative amnesty – has authored a new op-ed in which he writes:

The administration is thus implementing by executive order a policy it could not get Congress to adopt or even consider: amnesty for the millions of foreigners who entered the U.S. illegally or who overstayed their temporary visitor visas in order to work illegally in the U.S.

DHS Secretary Napolitano's letter to congressional Democrats does not confirm whether the administratively-amnestied illegal aliens will receive worker authorization. Nor does it attempt to justify the administration's apparent usurpation of congressional authority.

It does claim that the administrative change will "enhance public safety" by directing ICE to wait until an illegal alien commits a violent crime before considering deportation. Both public safety and logical reasoning have taken a backseat to election politics, it seems. Read more...

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security remain tight-lipped about any details on the Obama administration’s attempt at an administrative amnesty, more than three days after the news story first broke. Read more...

Despite the nonsensical statements coming out of DHS today, all illegal aliens do “pose a threat” to society in one way or another. Just because an illegal alien isn’t violent, it does not follow that their presence is not a threat to the rule of law, taxpayers, and society generally. Most illegal aliens violate a number of federal and state laws, and these violations create real victims. Read more...

The open-border crowd is very well-funded and constantly growing, as noted in my blog post about a recent anti-Secure Communities effort pushed by over 200 pro-amnesty groups. A new lawsuit filed by the U.S. Read more...

When businesses get away with violating immigration laws in the workplace, there's no telling how many more laws will fall by the wayside. Three years ago I wrote a blog post highlighting this phenomenon, pointing to the fact that the ICE enforcement raids in Postville, Iowa, uncovered not only employment of illegal immigrants but also more than 9,000 violations of child labor laws involving 32 youths.

Yesterday ABC News reported that the U.S. Department of Labor found children between the ages of six and 11 working in strawberry fields in the State of Washington, likely right alongside illegal immigrants. The three companies listed – George Hoffman Farms, Berry Good Farms, and Columbia Fruit, LLC – are not using E-Verify, according to the helpful NumbersUSA database. Read more...

The increasingly feckless American Bar Association continued pushing an open-border agenda at its annual meeting this week, which was, oddly, held in Toronto. The organization passed a resolution opposing any change to the way in which the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause is enforced. Read more...

The story of illegal alien fraudster and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas continues to unfold and he is finally beginning to feel the repercussions of his unlawful activity. Read more...

The open-border crowd is very well-funded and quite large, as illustrated by a recent anti-Secure Communities effort. Though the media and amnesty advocates often portray those of us promoting sane immigration policies as part of some enormous, far-reaching conspiracy, the reality is we make up a very small portion of the interests involved in the immigration debate. The reason we are influential is because our ideas and arguments are sound and backed with good research. Read more...

The union for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents has issued a sharp press release calling on Americans to take action against what it describes as "gross mismanagement" and an effort to "create backdoor amnesty through agency policy."

On June 11, 2010, ICE Union leaders around the nation issued a unanimous no-confidence vote in ICE Director John Morton. Since then, the union's concerns have grown. Read more...

The hyperbolic rhetoric of the open-border left has consequences, and now it appears to have been used as a means to legitimize hacking of governmental data. A hacking group apparently responsible for attacks on websites belonging to the Senate, the FBI, and the CIA has now focused its attacks on the Arizona Department of Public Safety, according to the Wall Street Journal. The group has posted files that appear to be training manuals, e-mails, intelligence documents, and other material that Arizona officials believe were accessed through the e-mail accounts of eight police officers. Read more...

A Chinese news article titled "China's 'Born in the USA' Frenzy" highlights the effort of one of its nationals engaging in birth tourism fraud in the United States. The practice is so troubling that even the Director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress, Marshall Fitz, recently said the following on CNN in a debate with CIS's Executive Director Mark Krikorian: Read more...

For many years the open-border crowd has pushed hard to perpetuate illegal employment throughout the United States, but today, in Chamber of Commerce of the United States v. Whiting, the Supreme Court has put an end to their anti-E-Verify effort. Many amnesty groups submitted briefs to the Court in support of the Chamber of Commerce in an attempt to get Arizona's law blocked. Read more...

This morning the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing titled, "Improving Efficiency and Ensuring Justice in the Immigration Court System." (See my colleague David North's report on the hearing here.) The focus of the hearing was the chronic backlogging in the immigration court system, and most of the discussion was about how the court system could be streamlined in order to meet growing demands. Read more...

According to a new Rasmussen Reports survey only 30 percent of likely voters think the U.S.-Mexico border is even "somewhat secure," while 64 percent disagree and say it is "not very secure." Twenty-nine percent of voters believe the border is "not at all secure." Only three percent said it is "very secure." Read more...

The debate over granting automatic birthright citizenship to children born to illegal aliens has had the effect of shifting public opinion in favor of a more narrow application of the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause, according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey. Read more...

Reuters has written an expose on the illegal hiring practices at Chipotle, the fast-food burrito chain that continues to be the focus of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement audit. The article is worth reading in full, as it generally avoids the frivolity found in most immigration reporting. Shockingly, the journalists admit: "Chipotle could have found anomalies had it used E-Verify." Here is part of the article: Read more...

According to a new Rasmussen Reports survey, 61 percent of adults say if immigration laws were enforced, there would be less poverty in America. Only 19 percent disagree with that assessment.

Seventy-seven percent of Republican respondents and 58 percent of adults not affiliated with either of the two political parties feel there would be less poverty if immigration laws were enforced. Forty-eight percent of democrat respondents agreed. Read more...

Citing building code violations, police and city inspectors in the city of San Gabriel — a Los Angeles suburb — recently closed three townhouses which had been converted to operate as a maternity center for birth tourists. (See video here.) According to city officials who spoke with the Chinese and Taiwanese temporary aliens, they traveled to the United States for the specific purpose of adding a U.S. passport-holder to their families. Read more...

California is gearing up for a legislative attempt at discouraging illegal immigration, this time following Arizona's lead. If it becomes law, Assembly Bill 26, or the "Secure Immigration Enforcement Act," will end sanctuary cities, add licensing laws that would discourage businesses from hiring illegal aliens and require use of E-Verify, strengthen the state's human smuggling laws, discourage illegal alien day labor, among other things. Read more...

While attending a discussion on birthright citizenship held by the State Legislators for Legal Immigration at the National Press Club in Washington this morning, I was able to witness the true face of the pro-amnesty, pro-illegal immigration crowd. On at least four occasions, the so-called "pro-immigrant" activists attempted to stop discussion by rudely interrupting the speakers and shouting down state legislators and professors. Read more...

In 1993, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) introduced legislation to clarify the scope of the 14th Amendment's Citizenship Clause and to end the practice of granting U.S. citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants.

Specifically, in a section titled "Basis of Citizenship Clarified," Reid's bill explained: Read more...

The amnesty crowd loves to claim that opposition to mass immigration is all based on race, and that anyone who opposes amnesty is necessarily a racist. Yet the more one listens to amnesty advocates, the clearer it becomes that it is the amnesty advocates themselves who use race-talk to advance their agenda.

Take, for example, UCLA Professor Kent Wong, a former staff attorney for the amnesty-advocating Service Employees International Union (SEIU), who has routinely blamed the failure of amnesty legislation on racists: Read more...

Salvadoran illegal immigrant Ingmar Guandique has been convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for killing intern Chandra Levy while she jogged in Washington, D.C.'s Rock Creek Park in May 2001. Guandique faces a minimum of 30 years to life in prison. Read more...

The California Supreme Court has reversed a lower court holding and sided with California Regents and illegal aliens on the issue of in-state tuition breaks. Under the latest ruling, California colleges (California State University, the University of California, and California Community Colleges) have been given the green light to offer tuition breaks to illegal aliens and deny the same benefit to U.S. citizens from other states. The case is available at the California courts website. Read more...

States regularly assist the federal government in making sure federal laws and regulations in a whole host of areas are followed. The feds generally welcome the support. But when it comes to immigration, the Obama administration has signaled opposition to states that wish to provide assistance. The administration argues that states are preempted from getting involved in immigration policy, but this argument is overbroad and ultimately incorrect. Read more...

The open-border media is reporting, seemingly begrudgingly and with as little detail as possible, the conviction of Honduran illegal alien Melvin Jovel for the execution-style murders of three New Jersey college students in 2007. This horrific crime doesn't fit nicely into the open-border media's amnesty agenda.

According to the Associated Press: Read more...

Last year, the amnesty-advocating, Arizona SB 1070-opposing, and garment-manufacturing company American Apparel was the focus of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation. It was discovered that up to 1,800 of the company's employees were likely illegal aliens. Read more...

I was recently interviewed by Joe Hicks, host of PJTV’s (Pajamas Media) Minority Report, on the issue of birthright citizenship for illegal aliens. My full report on the subject, "Birthright Citizenship in the United States: A Global Comparison," includes an overview of the history of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause as well as the most current list of the few countries which grant automatic citizenship to children of illegal aliens.

The video of the interview is available at the PJTV website. Read more...