Last week, the New York Times reported on the State Department's decision to bar the Council on Educational Travel USA (CETUSA) from sponsoring young foreigners who come to the United States in the Summer Work Travel (SWT) program. Read more...

There is considerable Internet discussion underway about the Mexican roots of Mitt Romney's family. It's a fascinating and complex story. Unfortunately, Univision anchor Jorge Ramos has muddied the waters with the simplistic suggestion that Romney is actually Mexican-American.

In his interview last week with Romney, Ramos introduced the story by equating Romney's background with that of Bill Richardson. Read more...

I just finished reading Tom Barry's new book, Border Wars, which grew out of his 2010 article in the Boston Review that was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in the public service category.

I recommend it highly, especially for those restrictionists who are willing to consider a view from the other side of the debate if it is informed by the sort of strong reporting and deep perspective on the border that have long characterized Barry's work. See, for example, his Border Lines blog. Read more...

The topic of Monday's "On Point" public radio program was the decline in social mobility in the United States. Host Tom Ashbrook and guests expressed alarm that the United States now trails such countries as Canada, Germany, France, Denmark, and Sweden in important metrics of the ability of citizens to rise on the economic ladder. The U.S. ladder, they agreed, has become steadily stickier, making those at the bottom more likely to stay at the bottom and those at the top to stay there. Read more...

On November 28, this blog took note of what I called an "Upper West Side of Manhattan" sensibility about immigration. People with this mindset exhibit views that are both expansive and generous about the value of immigrants, regardless of their numbers and human capital, and narrow and intolerant toward those who want to stop illegal immigration and limit legal immigration.

On Sunday, I had a peculiar encounter with the mindset as I took a long walk while listening to a podcast of Thursday's Diane Rehm show, which originates in Washington D.C.'s public radio station, WAMU. Read more...

The cover of the current New Yorker magazine, depicting Pilgrims in buckled hats and buckled jackets crawling through a hole in a border fence, is a fine example of the sensibility among many affluent, liberal Americans about illegal immigration. (My colleague David North has mentioned the cover as well.) I think of it as a quintessentially Upper West Side of Manhattan sensibility. It is most commonly seen on the New York Times editorial page. Read more...

Twenty-five years ago, the reviews were coming in about the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which President Reagan signed into law on November 7, 1986. IRCA offered amnesty to illegal immigrants who had either lived in the United States since January 1, 1982, or had done at least 90 days of agricultural work within a 12-month period ending May 1, 1986. The amnesty was part of a compromise, the other side of which was sanctions against employers who knowingly hired illegals. Read more...

The U.S. State Department has announced that it is imposing new restrictions on the Summer Work Travel (SWT) program, which over the past decade has brought about one million foreign students to the United States under cultural exchange program that provides them with J-1 visas and allows them to work for three months and then travel for another month.

The program has come into the national spotlight in recent months because of a protest by some students working at a Hershey warehouse near the Pennsylvania headquarters of the candy giant. Read more...

Some late-night time with Tivo this week provided three compelling Latino perspectives on the state of the American dream. The first came from a former illegal immigrant from Mexico who is now a brain surgeon; the second from an unidentified Central American migrant riding atop a train rumbling toward the U.S. border; the third from a former Cuban refugee who is now president of Miami-Dade College. Read more...

A story in Saturday's Washington Post about the mounting national infrastructure deficit brings to mind the observation by journalist Janet Malcolm that "we are all perpetually smoothing and rearranging reality to conform to our wishes." Read more...

Emotions are high among illegal immigrants in Alabama, as many flee the state whose governor recently signed the most severe law in the country against illegal immigrants. It is a situation that calls for serious journalism to inform the public about a complex and sensitive situation. Unfortunately, the reports of Univision reporter Maria Antonieta Collins seem intended to inflame, not to inform. Read more...

Exactly 25 years ago, on October 10, 1986, it was front-page news across the country: the House of Representatives had passed a sweeping immigration reform bill that would provide amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, a special amnesty for farm workers, and a guestworker program that would ensure farmers a large, continuing supply of field hands. Read more...

The reporting of RT, the Russian government-financed English-language news channel, is often characterized by schadenfreude about the social, economic, and political problems of the United States. That dark pleasure was clearly on display in RT's reporting on the foreign college students' protest against working conditions at the Hershey Co.'s distribution center just outside the Pennsylvania town that bears the company's name. Read more...

Friday evening's Univision newscast included a story about the intensifying flight of wealthy Mexicans to Texas. Reporter Brenda Carmona said the migration is often referred to as the "Mexodo" – a play on the Spanish word "exodo," which means "exodus" – the equivalent in English would be "Mexodus". Read more...

The protest against Hershey Co, the corporate chocolate icon, by foreign students working under a State Department cultural exchange program is not diminishing, even as many of the students prepare to return home at the end of their four-month J-1 visas.

To the contrary, protesting students are gaining new support in their effort to expose what they call sweatshop conditions at Hershey's Eastern Distribution Center. The massive plant, located just east of the Pennsylvania town that bears the company's name, ships candies made at the nearby Hershey factory. Read more...

Mexican scholar and social critic Luis Rubio is known for his columns in the newspaper Reforma that help explain his country's failure to emerge as a dynamic democracy capable of offering opportunities to its people rather than pushing so many to emigrate. He provided another fascinating example in Sunday’s paper, writing that Mexico is plagued by a "classism" that is powerfully illustrated by a video available on Youtube. Read more...

Probably the most unpleasant part of my job here at CIS is that some people – often well-intentioned, if not well-informed – think ill of us for pointing out the costs of illegal immigration. Many of them believe that immigration, legal or not, should be accepted as an unmixed blessing and supported without question. Some of them respond with disdain to our concerns about illegal immigration's fiscal, labor market, and social effects. They act as if only a racist or a small-minded crank would dare to raise such issues. In their eyes, illegal immigration – and illegal immigrants – must never be subjected to scrutiny or criticism.

That is why it was refreshing to read today's Arizona Republic editorial about the controversy in Arizona over claims that some of the wildfires that have ravaged the state have been caused by illegal immigrants. Read more...

The Hershey Company, the iconic candy maker that cultivates an image of all- American goodness and corporate responsibility, has a public-relations problem involving its foreign workforce.

The corporation, which wants to be the world's sweet shop, is being labeled a sweatshop by students from foreign countries who are brought to the U.S. under a State Department program (the J-1 visa) billed as a "cultural exchange". (My colleague Jessica Vaughan has commented on the program here.) Read more...

The former Juarez crime reporter who received political asylum in the United States after claiming that his life had been threatened says Mexican police, not drug traffickers, are the greatest threat to Mexican reporters.

"The narcos don't care (about reporters)," Jorge Luis Aguirre said on Univision's Sunday Spanish-language news program, Al Punto. "How does a reporter concern them if they control the government and control the police?" Read more...

The Texas cities of Mission and El Paso are experiencing a population and business boom, as thousands of Mexicans flee violence in the border states of Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, and Chihuahua, according to a story in yesterday's Mexico City daily Reforma.

The newspaper reports that many of the newcomers arrive with investor visas, which the United States provides to persons who bring job-creating investments with them. My colleague David North has written frequently about the EB-5 investor program; for his blogs postings on it, see here. Read more...

In his syndicated column last week, Univision anchorman Jorge Ramos wrote about the fundamental importance of credibility in journalism. Credibility, he said, is a journalist's job: "If a journalist can't be believed, his work isn't worth anything."

Ramos's concern for professional ethics and truth-telling adds a touch of irony to his claim – made on the air and in another column – that President Obama has broken a promise to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, aka NALEO. Read more...

As President Obama addresses the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza today in Washington, he will face renewed pressure to push for “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation that would not only provide legal status to illegal immigrants but expand future immigration from Latin America and other parts of the world. Read more...

As I was doing research over the weekend, I read a New York Times story with a dateline of Los Angeles, August 12, 1950. Here is the lead:

Much of the economic distress among seasonal farm workers results from a concerted, long-term effort by big "corporation farms," particularly in California, to keep wages at rock bottom by the use of foreign labor, the President's Commission on Migratory Labor was told today.

As we have noted here before, at least two Arizona reporters have reported on public skepticism about the refusal of federal officials to speak directly about concerns that smugglers or other illegal border crossers have caused some of the recent, devastating fires in the Arizona borderlands.

Now one of those reporters, Leo Banks of the Tucson Weekly, has come out with the most comprehensive report yet. Read more...

Editor's note: This is the first installment of a 25-year anniversary series on the lead up to passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which was signed into law in late 1986.

In November of 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which offered amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and established sanctions for employers who hired those not authorized to work in the country. Read more...

I’m a native of Baltimore and a lifelong fan of the Orioles. A few years ago, when the Orioles played a home game against the Red Sox, I had the unpleasant experience of watching and listening as thousands of Red Sox fans proudly, loudly and sometimes obnoxiously cheered for their team. I cracked to a friend, “Now I know what it feels like to live in an occupied country.”

A similar scene unfolded in Pasadena, Calif., on Saturday, where fans of Mexico’s soccer team filled the Rose Bowl with Mexican flags and nationalistic fervor as their team defeated the U.S. by a score of 4-2. Read more...

Sen. Robert Menendez says the comprehensive immigration reform bill (S.1258) he and some Democratic colleagues introduced this week offers "a complete solution - a real solution - to end undocumented immigration and restore the rule of law." He adds that it "signals to the American people that we are serious about fixing our broken immigration system." Read more...

The scandal that would drive him from office was building slowly when President Richard Nixon had a press conference 39 years ago today. Speaking of the previous month's fateful break-in at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building, the president declared that "the White House has had no involvement whatever in this particular incident." Read more...

The issue of who or what has caused devastating fires in Arizona's borderlands obviously should be pursued vigorously, with due care not to tie it unfairly to the issue of illegal immigration. Sen. John McCain didn't advance that effort on Saturday when he offered no substance to support his claim that some of the fires are caused by illegal immigrants. Read more...

For at least two years now, Arizona journalist Leo W. Banks has been writing and speaking about the strange silence of the federal government on the connection between forest fires in southern Arizona and the smugglers of drugs and human beings.

Banks has contrasted the widespread public belief that the fires are caused by the smugglers – either accidentally or in an effort to distract the Border Patrol – with the refusal of federal officials to address the issue. Read more...