The DREAM act, as I noted in yesterday's posting, speaks to the circumstances of the group of illegal immigrants most likely to draw sympathy from across a wide spectrum of political views. The problem, sympathetic conservative columnist Debra Saunders notes, is to find "a middle way that unites the right thing to do with smart politics." Read more...

Those who accuse conservatives with heartless and unshakable antipathy to immigrants, devoid of any understanding of the human and moral complexities that are part of our nation's immigration dilemmas, don't bother to know much about conservative thinking. Case in point: Debra Saunders' heartfelt column supporting a future GOP written version of the so-called "DREAM Act." Read more...

In a burst of ironic serendipity, the Wall Street Journal published two articles on the perilous state of the American economy and the idea, now gaining traction, that immigrant entrepreneurs are one solution to our economic problems. Read more...

So, do the new Pew numbers mean that even with only a small uptick in the American economy, the number of illegal immigrants is beginning to rise again? If this were the case, it would undercut administration claims that it was its tough enforcement policies that were responsible for decline in illegal immigration that Pew had found in an earlier study. Read more...

It seems like only yesterday that news reporters, legalization supporters, and the Obama administration were touting the new Pew study that reported, "U.S. Unauthorized Immigration Flows Are Down Sharply Since Mid-Decade." Read more...

The recent Politico story entitled "Hispanic vote a 2012 wild card" does not present a very attractive picture of "Hispanics." It presents them as having a narrow, self-interested focus on the almost total advancement of their group in the immigration process with little regard to the possible needs of other groups or the United States more generally. Read more...

Every once in a while an immigration news story comes along that is just so bad, that there is no other word to describe it but awful. Regretfully that is a case with a story on the role of "Hispanics" in the just concluded 2010 elections. The Politico story is entitled "Hispanic vote a 2012 wild card" and is written in part by the ordinarily sensible journalist Ben Smith. Read more...

In one of the most widely known deductions in the Sherlock Holmes mysteries oeuvre, the famously logical detective realized that the fact that a guard dog didn't bark meant he must have known the killer.

Which brings us to the president's post election press conference.

Among the many questions he was asked, several had to do with the possibilities of finding common ground with the new Republican Congress: Read more...

Among the many important results yesterday's election is the resounding defeat of two measures that would have allowed non-citizens to vote. In previous entries, here, here, here, and elsewhere, I had taken up the most recent efforts to do away with the requirement that only citizens be allowed to vote. Read more...

In what can only be described as a very ugly exhortation, President Obama called on Latinos to "punish our enemies." That remark, reported by the New York Times, was part of the president's full-scale effort to motivate Latinos to come back to the Democratic fold and help buttress their cause in the elections next week. Read more...

Moral arguments are central to the American immigration debate. Whatever side of the various immigration policy debates Americans find themselves on, questions of fairness, right and wrong, morality, and appeals to basic ethical principals are never very far away. Moral and ethical terms like, "justice" and "fairness" permeate immigration debate. If you Google the terms "fairness" and "immigration" together, you come up with 1.8 million items. Read more...

One of the frustrations, perhaps to be expected, in debates about American immigration issues is how often the same hackneyed arguments are repeated. Take the question of whether non-citizens should be allowed to vote. Read more...

Like the corpse that won't stay buried, efforts to resurrect non-citizen voting this Halloween and election season are again making news. The AP story headline reads: "States Weigh Letting Noncitizens Vote," but the headline itself misinforms. Actually, it's not states that are considering allowing non-citizen voting, but two cities, Portland, Maine, and San Francisco, and this makes a difference. Read more...

The Washington Post headline is certainly startling: "In WA, illegal immigrants canvassing for votes."

The story reports on one Maria Gianni, who overstayed her visa permit 13 years ago, and others like her, who is now campaigning in Washington State for Democratic senate candidate Patty Murray. Gianni, "one of dozens of volunteers – many of them illegal immigrants," works for an immigrant advocacy organization called OneAmerica Votes. Read more...

[See also "President Obama's Silent Immigration Amnesty, Part I: Ignoring Broken Windows."]

President Obama's silent immigration amnesty undercuts his public promise to respond to Americans' desire to curtail illegal immigration and enforce our country's immigration laws. Dismissing the cases of those already being brought before the courts for violating immigration laws is an awful betrayal of his word to Americans.

But it is worse that that because his silent amnesty, in effect, further shatters immigration policy's already broken windows. Read more...

In the late 1960s Phil Zimbardo, then a young Assistant Professor of Psychology at CUNY's Brooklyn College, parked a car without a license plate and with its hood up in a Bronx neighborhood, had a comparable car parked in Palo Alto, Calif., and photographed the results. As George L. Kelling and James Q. Read more...

Watch we do, not what we say, John Mitchell famously said as the Nixon administration set out to further the cause of African American civil rights in the South and elsewhere with its conservative rhetoric as a cover.

"Don't watch what do, but believe what we say" is the Obama administration's deceptive rhetorical strategy. Case in point: the health care coverage of illegal immigrants. Read more...

Anyone who spends much time trying to sort through the complex issues and equities associated with immigration policy becomes almost numb to the ceaseless repetition of convention narrative memes. Most illegal-immigrant narratives reflect either exculpation or empathetic explanation: Illegal immigrants are here because they do the jobs that Americans don't want to do. They are here because they only seek a better life, and who can criticize them for wanting that for themselves and their families? Illegal immigrants pay their taxes. And so on. Read more...

Univision is an important media and information source for many American Hispanics. It is, in its own words, "is the premier Spanish-language media company in the United States with a powerhouse portfolio of media assets that not only inform and entertain Hispanics, but provide a vital link to their community."And it would seem that there is some truth in the self-promotional material. Read more...

What if the government developed and mandated tools for workplace enforcement of our immigration laws? What if we carefully evaluated the results?

Wouldn't serious workplace enforcement of existing immigration laws would cut off one of the chief benefits and economic supports for those who are choosing to violate American immigration laws. What then? Read more...

President Obama is caught in an immigration dilemma. He has long favored a "pathway to citizenship" and legalization of the 11-12 million undocumented immigrants now living in the United States. However, the public is ambivalent about legalizations programs and has made it very clear that they want the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States dramatically reduced, if not substantially eliminated. Read more...

When Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano spoke on administration immigration policy before the liberal think tank Center for American Progress on November 13, 2009, she touted the administration's commitment to "serious and effective enforcement." Read more...

Among the hardiest of metaphorical clichés in immigration debates is the need to create a "pathway to citizenship." This concept is almost exclusively used in connection with efforts to legalize the status of some 11-12 million documented immigrants.

Along with being among the hardiest, it is also the most anemic and least evocative of unhelpful immigration metaphors. That is one reason why it is almost always found in the company of qualifying adjectives. Read more...

Rounding out the top three favorite unhelpful immigration metaphors, along with "the system is broken" and "out of the shadows" is "comprehensive immigration reform." That phrase carries with a double metaphorical imperative. Read more...

Second in popularity only to "the system is broken" among unhelpful immigration metaphors is the hackneyed meme of helping illegal immigrants come "out of the shadows." Read more...

Anyone who spends more than a few minutes on immigration matters will soon realize that the debate abounds in shallow metaphors whose cant recitation suggests knowing knowledge, but are actually meant to substitute for thought and analysis. Read more...

It's not quite the aura of seriousness and purpose that House members, and especially Democratic House members, might want to convey shortly before what is shaping up to be an historic midterm election.

Comedy Central comedian Stephen Colbert testified before a House immigration subcommittee hearing by chairwoman Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) titled, "Protecting America's Harvest." He was invited because he had taken up United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez on a challenge to experience life as a field worker. Colbert did so for one day and used that experience as a comedy segment on his show. Read more...

The Republican Party has just released its Pledge to America. Read more...

Rounding out the fantasy of a national immigration auction is the touted allure of having a system that, "wouldn't rely on the judgment of [government] bureaucrats." Unfortunately, the actual proposal immediately negates that likelihood. The proposal states that, "When prices rose, the government could react by increasing the number of permits, better syncing immigration with the business cycle" (emphasis added). So much for keeping government bureaucrats out of the process. Read more...

The authors of a new proposal laid out in the New York Times for a national immigration auction tout its many virtues. They herald, "The good news is that there is a way to replace [the current system] that will promote economic growth while reducing the flow of illegal workers." It sounds almost too good to be true… and it is. Read more...