Yesterday, CIS hosted a panel discussion on a new report about welfare use by immigrants, which was written by Steven Camarota, our director of research. (The video and transcript of the discussion will be posted next week.) The report has obvious significance in the national debate about immigration policy. The goal of social justice, which welfare programs seek to advance, requires an effort to limit eligibility for those programs. Below is an excerpt from a fascinating discussion of this and related issues. Read more...

It seems to me that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders contradicted himself on immigration reform during his appearance on today's Diane Rehm Show.

"I support immigration reform," said Sanders during the public radio program. "I think we need comprehensive immigration reform."

But Sanders added a caveat, saying, "I don't want to see companies utilizing guest worker programs to lower wages for American workers." Read more...

Yesterday in this space, I expressed admiration for Telemundo's coverage last Friday of the census report on the explosive growth of the Latino population.

Today I want to look at a sidebar in that same Telemundo newscast. It was introduced by anchorman Jose Diaz-Balart, who said, "One of the ways to strengthen our community is education. In a country where the white and Afro-American population is aging, Hispanic youth could represent hope." Read more...

There was a remarkable moment during Friday's Telemundo evening newscast. It came in a story that anchor Jose Diaz-Balart billed as revealing "the dark side of Hispanic growth" and showing why "many fear that the anti-immigrant climate will grow."

The story was prompted by the new report from the Census Bureau that the Hispanic population had grown to more than 50 million, an increase of 15 million during the past decade. That represents a 43 percent jump since 2000. Read more...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano visited the Mexican border on Thursday, offering assurances that it remains open for business and that the murderous violence now commonplace among rival drug trafficking organizations has not crossed into the United States. Read more...

The big story on last night's Univision newscasts was the census report that the Latino population has grown by 43 percent over the last decade and now totals 50 million.

While the demographic shift is big news across the country, Univision also covered a related story that has not received much play – the crushing workload of the nation's 270 immigration judges, whose courts are clogged with 350,000 cases per year.

Dana Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, offered a glimpse of what that means at the local level. Read more...

The massive headline across the top of the front page of today's Prensa Grafica, published in San Salvador, reads "OBAMA". Just below comes the subhead, "USA President arrives today", followed by a large photo of the president and a caption stating that the visit is expected to produce support both for social programs and for the fight against drug traffickers. Read more...

John Morton, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, appeared on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" this morning. (See the video here.) He offered this general outline for a credible program of worksite enforcement. Morton envisioned a cultural shift that would end the workplace charade that for the past 25 years has made a mockery of the 1986 law that, for the first time, made it illegal to hire illegal immigrants. Said Morton: Read more...

An opinion column in today's El Universal, the Mexico City daily, criticizes Mexican judicial authorities and Mexican society in general for failing to respond to the rampant kidnapping of migrants passing through on their way to the U.S. border.

Columnist Miguel Carbonell cites a report by the National Human Rights Commission that over a six-month period last year, 11,000 migrants – mostly from Central America – were kidnapped. Read more...

In recent months, the Mexican press has been drawing attention to the violence and abuses inflicted upon illegal immigrants from Central America as they head toward the U.S. border. Particularly scandalous is the inability of Mexican authorities to stop the predators who work the confined – and therefore controllable – space of the rail line that runs from the border state of Chiapas through Veracruz and on to Mexico City. The train that travels that route is known both as "The Beast" and "The Train of Death." Read more...

National Public Radio last week reported a story from Phoenix that was intended to illustrate a recent finding by the Pew Hispanic Center. Pew reported that in the second quarter of 2010, American citizens lost more than a million jobs while foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs. Read more...

Ever since his days as a regular on the McLaughlin Group, Morton Kondracke struck me as a decent fellow. He was a little conservative for my tastes, but he came across as a fundamentally decent man.

Well, "Mor-tahn," as host John McLaughlin famously called him, did some damage to that impression yesterday. In his column for Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper where he is the executive editor, Kondracke declared that Arizona had been reduced to "a state of Minuteman vigilantism, death threats against politicians and judges, talk-radio demagoguery, and bullying of Latinos and rival politicians by 'America's toughest sheriff.'" Read more...

Yesterday I described the situation of a Mexican couple who are illegal immigrants in New York and who have been saving their money to pay a $2,000 fee to a smuggler prepared to bring them their 11-year-old daughter, who is living with relatives in the state of Puebla. I noted the traumatic changes the young girl is likely to experience during the journey and after she arrives. Read more...

During a visit to New York last week, I had the opportunity to speak with a few of the Mexican immigrants who are ubiquitous workers in Manhattan's countless restaurants, delis, cafes, corner markets, pizzerias, bagel shops, and hotels. Read more...

Upset at the abuses suffered by Central Americans illegally crossing Mexico, a group of Mexican senators is proposing a law that would offer safe passage for migrants headed for the United States.

The proposal would require Mexico's Interior secretary to establish safe routes for the migrants to ravel by land, sea, and air. According to an article in the December 24 Excelsior newspaper, it has the support of senators from across the political spectrum, including members of the conservative PAN, the centrist PRI, and the leftist PRD. Read more...

After the Senate vote on the Dream Act on Saturday, a spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza issued a warning to the Republicans who voted against the measure.

"The most immediate repercussions are that – particularly those members in states where the Latino population has political influence – they'd better watch out," said Clarissa Martinez, NCLR's director of immigration and national campaigns. "I am talking about persons like Hutchison and Cornyn of Texas, LeMieux in Florida, Kirk in Illinois." Read more...

A column in today's Reforma newspaper highlights the troubling gap between Mexico's rhetorical commitment to the human rights of migrants and the abuses suffered by Central American migrants within Mexico. The column in the Mexico City daily is authored by Navi Pillay, United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

Pillay cites a recent statement by Mexican President Felipe Calderon that, "We don't want to do to the migrants who come to Mexico, whatever their legal status, that which we don't want to be done to our migrants in the United States." Read more...

Some straightforward comments on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" program this morning from Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Said Baker: Read more...

In a chilling report on Mexico's brutal drug cartels in the current edition of The New York Review of Books, journalist Alma Guillermoprieto takes note of the criminal activities of the Zetas. That bloody organization started out in the 1990s as the muscle for the Gulf Cartel and recently branched out into extortion, holdups, and the kidnapping of Central American migrants who seek to cross Mexico by rail on their way to the United States. Read more...

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday announced record numbers deportations of criminal aliens, declaring that the figures demonstrated that the Obama administration is "focused on enforcing our immigration laws in a smart, effective manner that prioritizes public safety and national security." Read more...

The author of a new book that warns of threats to Mexico's governability says the deterioration of state power reflects the growing influence of long-established criminal organizations that are widening their activities. Read more...

A new book that was discussed Wednesday at the American Enterprise Institute proposes to redirect U.S. immigration policy away from its heavy emphasis on family reunification.

"We couldn't find another nation in the world that's as generous as we are with regard to family immigration," said Pia Orrenius, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and co-author of Beside the Golden Door: U.S. Immigration Reform in a New Era of Globalization. Read more...

One of the many vexing aspects of the immigration debate is that economists differ sharply about how immigration affects the earnings of other workers.

The Urban Institute has summarized the dispute this way: "Some economists argue that immigration accounts for a 3 to 4 percent decline in the earnings of native-born workers, with losses concentrated at the low end of the income distribution; others find negligible or positive impacts." Read more...

A new book about the abuses suffered by Central American migrants passing through Mexico reports that one man visits a Western Union office in the state of Veracruz up to 35 times a day to pick up money sent to ransom those kidnapped by local gangs.

"It is clear evidence of the failure of the authorities to stop the abuses," said Salvadoran journalist Oscar Martinez, author of "Los Migrantes Que No Importan," or "The Migrants Who Don't Matter." The book is published by the Spanish publishing house Icaria. Read more...

For the past several years, advocates of illegal immigrants have complained -- often justifiably -- of the hostile tone of some of their opponents, particularly on talk radio. Read more...

The lead story on last night's newscast on Univision, the Spanish-language TV network, reported on Hurricane Karl's devastation of widespread coastal areas of the Mexican state of Veracruz, whose northern border is just 250 miles south of Texas.

Reporter Edgar Munoz narrated scenes reminiscent of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina five years ago. Aerial shots showed entire communities under water. Families sat atop roofs waiting for aid.

"The people are desperate," said Munoz. "They are hungry. They are thirsty." Read more...

On yesterday's "Al Punto," the Spanish-language TV network Univision's Sunday morning news program, Sen. Robert Menendez said he will introduce "comprehensive immigration reform" legislation in hopes of getting it passed during the upcoming lame duck session of Congress. 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...

"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...

"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...