The immigration issue could put health reform at risk once again, as it did last fall. Then, President Obama had to do some fancy footwork after an unceremonious challenge during his speech to a joint session of Congress. Rep. Joe Wilson was right, and the House bill held gaping loopholes that pretty much guaranteed illegal aliens would benefit under health reform. Ultimately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi added a modicum of eligibility verification to the House bill, and Majority Leader Harry Reid kept the relatively stronger verification provisions in his Senate version. Read more...

President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders are working hard to line up enough votes and plot a path to get their version of health reform across the goal line. Though immigration hasn't been raised as much as other bubbling controversies like abortion, this issue remains alive. Read more...

The White House unveiled its latest health reform scheme Monday, but the materials make no mention of whether it would cover or bar illegal aliens under various health programs or require enrollees' eligibility verification based on citizenship or immigrant status. Read more...

There's new proof that the Obama administration is soft on immigration enforcement. Fewer illegal aliens were detained in the final three months of 2009. The drop in detentions shows that the new administration is willing to let illegal immigration slide for aliens who don't have a rap sheet. Easing off of those detentions means ICE has returned to "catch and release" for the vast majority of illegal entrants. The bottom line: Fewer illegal aliens overall are being placed in detention, and that's a bad thing. Read more...

President Obama and congressional Democrats are trying to figure out how to get health reform back on track. The president took a desperate, rare step and invited in GOP leaders this week to give his quest an air of bipartisanship. A key goal of those driving this "reform" has ostensibly been to extend access to health coverage to the uninsured. Read more...

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has proposed $75 million in the state budget to fund health insurance for thousands of legal immigrants. This represents a 25 percent spending increase, amidst a crippling economic recession. The Democratic governor's proposal illustrates some of the problems in larger issues of government health care and coverage of legal immigrants. Read more...

A funny thing happened on the way to the coliseum, where open-borders advocates and other strident ethnic activists thought the lions would deal a final blow to state and local immigration enforcement. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official — from the Obama administration, no less — actually defended the program. ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton praised the 287(g) program in comments reported by the Arizona Republic. Read more...

There are new indications that supporting mass amnesty and liberal immigration levels may carry political costs. Two prominent Republican lawmakers who've pushed amnesty now face political heat for those actions. U.S. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have become targets for their open-borders stances. Read more...

A Washington Post editorial Saturday argues that illegal aliens should be allowed to purchase health insurance through the "exchange" created in both the House and Senate health reform bills. The argument is a familiar one in health policy circles. Having more people in the insurance pool means rendering less uncompensated care that burdens hospitals and other providers. Read more...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid continues to try to force a Senate vote to pass health reform before Christmas. Not even a pep talk/arm twisting, when all Democratic senators met with President Obama at the White House Tuesday, could secure the votes needed to end a filibuster. Read more...

President Obama has laid out his latest, great policy agenda item: a new jobs program. Unfortunately, his plan omits the easiest, most cost-effective measure. To get Americans back to work, stop importing 125,000 new foreign workers every single month. Read more...

Washington, D.C.'s Maryland suburbs are the home the latest jurisdiction to let political correctness put Americans at risk from criminal aliens. The indefensible policy of Montgomery County bars county police officers from communicating with federal immigration authorities, unless the suspect has first committed a terrible crime. Even then, officers must get permission to call ICE. Read more...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" gives the appearance of going further to bar illegal aliens from taxpayer-funded health benefits than the House-passed legislation or other Senate bills. But a closer read exposes loopholes, flaws, and the very tools for quickly undoing whatever merits the Reid measure contains. Read more...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has declared that the southern border is sufficiently secured and that it's time for Congress to start working on "comprehensive immigration reform." Of course, "comprehensive immigration reform" is code for mass amnesty and massive increases in foreign workers. Read more...

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is apparently the one being dishonest now, and she owes Congressman Joe Wilson an apology. The health reform bill she’s bringing to the House floor Saturday, H.R. 3962, rewards illegal aliens with taxpayer-funded health benefits. Read more...

House Democratic leaders have unveiled their health reform bill. The new bill, H.R. 3962, represents the latest iteration, and combines three separate House committees' bills. The combo mega-bill comes in at nearly 2,000 pages. And the legislation includes one eligibility verification provision — proving Joe Wilson was right. Read more...

Rank-and-file evangelicals have sounded off in the past couple of weeks since the 42-member National Association of Evangelicals endorsed wholesale amnesty and increased immigration at a recent Senate immigration subcommittee hearing. Read more...

The Obama administration continues to roll back the enforcement measures that the Bush administration had stepped up following its 2007 defeat on mass amnesty. The latest softening on enforcement of the laws on the books against illegal immigration comes in strictures placed on the effective and promising 287(g) program. This program is extraordinary in force multiplication, cost-effectiveness, and real results. Read more...

Two days after CIS's panel on religious perspectives on immigration policy, the National Association of Evangelicals became the latest pawn in immigration politics. The NAE has failed its flock, falling far short on the "wise as serpents, innocent as doves" standard. Rather, goaded by open-borders adherents wearing clerical garb, the NAE has become the most recent religious bureaucracy to foist biblically questionable immigration policies on citizen parishioners. Read more...

Though health "reform" and energy taxes are ahead of immigration on the legislative agenda, the Obama administration has begun greasing the bureaucracy's skids for when amnesty comes. For anyone who followed the bureaucratic screw-ups following the 1986 IRCA amnesty, this scheme looks strangely loophole-ridden -– like the rubber-stamping and massive fraud and abuse of 20-plus years ago. Rather than an honest effort to improve processing times, Homeland Security appears to have missed some details. Read more...

Candidates in the race for governor of Virginia differ on the issue of state and local enforcement relating to illegal and criminal aliens. Former state Attorney General Bob McDonnell supports statewide involvement in the 287(g) program. Democratic State Sen. Creigh Deeds is unenthusiastic and vague. Read more...

The big political dust-up last week was the Congressional Black Caucus's resolution directed at Rep. Joe Wilson, who called President Obama on his inaccuracy during his recent speech before a joint session of Congress. The precipitating event served to spark scrutiny and public discussion of loopholes in health legislation relating to coverage of illegal aliens. But a less prominent political stunt also went on in the nation's capital. Read more...

Most of the news media have worked overtime to deny that health reform legislation covers illegal aliens (it most definitely does). But there are a few exceptions — thank God! One is the Courier out in Iowa. The Waterloo, Iowa, news people actually looked at the bill, H.R. 3200. Read more...

Watching President Obama's health care speech before Congress Wednesday night, I was reminded of another President's words.

As the President flatly asserted that illegal aliens are definitely not covered in health reform, I thought of Ronald Reagan's jovial rejoinder when Jimmy Carter played fast and loose with the facts: "There you go again."

President Obama lashed at the work many have done over the past several weeks to examine actual legislation and speak the truth about it. His parrying included this visceral jab: Read more...