This is my seventh and last blog on the SAFE ("Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement") Act, a bill pending in the House of Representatives as H.R. 2278. In prior blogs, I discussed in some detail the benefits of the SAFE Act and explained why it is vastly superior to the bill passed by the Senate several weeks ago. Read more...

There are major differences between the immigration bill passed a few weeks ago in the Senate and the SAFE Act, the immigration bill pending in the House of Representatives, especially in the approach taken toward aliens who, in addition to being in the United States illegally, commit criminal offenses. Read more...

Informed statisticians inside the government and out calculate that, at a minimum, about 40 percent of those living in our country without permission initially entered legally through land, sea and air ports of entry and then simply overstayed their periods of authorized admission, melting into the interior and working illegally, often by assuming the identities and using the critical data (such as Social Security numbers) of citizens and lawful residents. In other words, nearly half of the illegal-alien population consists of individuals who abused our visa and visa-waiver systems. The phenomenon has risen to a crisis level.

This is why I find it odd — anachronistic in the extreme — that the tipping point for the Senate, in its embarrassing rush to pass an immigration reform bill, any immigration reform bill no matter how flawed, was a last-minute amendment providing for a "surge" of Border Patrol agents on the southern land border. Read more...

In my last blog on the "Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement (SAFE) Act", an immigration bill pending in the House of Representatives as H.R.2278, I discussed the terrorism and national security provisions in Title II of the draft legislation. Read more...

In a blog on July 23, Center fellow David North wrote of the controversy surrounding Alejandro Mayorkas, presently the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and nominee to be number two in USCIS's mother department, Homeland Security (DHS). Read more...

In prior blogs, I've been discussing the strengths of the "Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement (SAFE) Act", an immigration bill pending in the House of Representatives as H.R. 2278, including its commitment to legitimate interior enforcement as well as border initiatives, and the framework it establishes for improved federal-state-local cooperation where immigration law and policy are concerned. Read more...

The "Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement (SAFE) Act", an immigration bill pending in the House of Representatives as H.R. 2278, is a modern marvel of legislative honesty and symmetry: it means what it says, and says what it means. Read more...

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has just announced a unique agreement with the government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) in which boat people interdicted on the high seas headed for Australia to seek asylum will instead be shunted to processing camps in PNG. If determined to be legitimate refugees, they will be resettled there, instead of Australia. Read more...

Note: This is the first of several blogs on the Strengthen and Fortify Enforcement (SAFE) Act, an immigration bill pending in the House of Representatives as H.R.2278. This blog reflects on those aspects of the bill that encourage cooperation among and between the federal, state, and local governments where their interlocking responsibilities are concerned. Read more...

On June 26th, the Supreme Court voided key portions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Although most media outlets, such as the Los Angeles Times, focused on the changes to tax, inheritance, health, and Social Security laws and policies the ruling would bring about, it seemed evident to at least some observers that another consequence of the decision would be in the way federal immigration authorities confer benefits to homosexual foreign spouses of American citizens petitioning on their behalf. Previously, such petitions were denied. Read more...

The Los Angeles Times reported this week that "[m]ore than 1,300 minors — including several dozen 14 or younger — were held for days in immigration detention facilities for adults over a four-year period when the Obama administration ramped up deportations, according to a new report by an advocacy group [the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC)]." Read more...

Two dogs share my home; they're wonderful companions for empty-nesters such as my wife and me. They have worked their way into our hearts in ways we didn't expect. Our grown children get a big charge out of that. They accuse use of having let the dogs become surrogate kids and suggest half-seriously that they won't be surprised when we begin calling the dogs by their names. Read more...

Ibragim Todashev, a Russian national of Chechen origin and the Islamic religion, was killed last week after an interview with police and FBI turned violent and he allegedly attacked an FBI agent. According to reports, Todashev was being questioned about his part in a drug-related triple homicide in Massachusetts and had just admitted complicity. Read more...

I've been closely reading the Gang of Eight immigration reform bill introduced into the Senate (the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act"). And I have to admit the more I read, the more I feel sullied. To say it is deeply flawed is a sad understatement, like describing a catastrophic category-5 hurricane as a "bad storm". Read more...

Both Republicans and Democrats alike seem to be rallying round the same talking point when referring to "comprehensive immigration reform" in the wake of the Boston bombings — something along the lines of "we need to press forward; we'll be better off knowing who all these people are."

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), member of the Gang of Eight, has taken that line, as explained by Jon Feere in his April 26 blog for the Center. Read more...

As probably most readers of the Center's website know, a federal lawsuit was filed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in a challenge to the Obama administration's end run around Congress when it refused to move forward with DREAM Act legislation, and instituted instead an administrative deferred action program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or "DACA") under the guise of its Department of Homeland Security's "prosecutorial discretion" policies.

Many people (myself among them) believe that the program is both unconstitutional, because it infringes on the lawmaking prerogative unique to Congress under the separation of powers, and illegal, because it is not an act of prosecutorial discretion, but rather an abuse of discretion. Read more...

Author's note: This is the second of two blogs on the subject of the Boston Marathon terrorist bombings. Read Part 1.

Two bombs serially exploded at the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 15, wounding 280-plus people and killing another three. By the early morning hours of Friday, April 19, two brothers, in a panic that their photos had been released by police to the media as suspects of interest, went on a crime spree involving a carjacking, an ATM theft, and the murder of one police officer and serious wounding of a second. They were tracked and the older brother died in a shootout at the scene while the younger escaped, only to be found and arrested 20 hours later (Friday evening), wounded and hiding in a boat. Read more...

Author's note: This is the first of two blogs on the subject of the Boston Marathon terrorist bombings. Read Part 2.

I've been contemplating the linguistic gymnastics that the Gang of Eight has used — not only to describe their massive, 800-plus page immigration bill as "stringent but fair", but also within the bill itself. They (the gymnastics) are a wonder to behold. Read more...

When observing the folks who make up our political class, I'm often of the opinion that, somehow, reality is always just slightly distorted around them — as if they are in another, alternate universe altogether and they only seem to share space and time with us, but not in any meaningful way. Read more...

Dictionary.com defines the interesting German word schadenfreude as "satisfaction or pleasure at someone else's misfortune". Every language should have such a word, although I suspect many don't because few of us admit to such feelings — they're among life's guilty little pleasures. Read more...

If, as they say, politics makes for strange bedfellows, then immigration politics in today's America makes for absolutely bizarre bedfellows.

Business and agriculture rarely have anything useful to say about unionization and the labor movement. Conversely, labor leaders routinely disparage employers, whether in business or agriculture, for their views on wages, benefits, and employee working conditions. And religious leaders frequently shun involvement in such earthly matters, preferring instead to focus on the moral health of their flock and the nation as a whole. Read more...

There is an interesting article by Jeffrey Toobin in the April 1, 2013, edition of The New Yorker magazine. Entitled "Wedding Bells", it is a legal analysis of the two gay rights cases on which the Supreme Court recently held oral argument, and which it will be deciding this term. Read more...

The media this past weekend have been abuzz with news that the so-called "Gang of Eight" — a bipartisan group of senators seeking a way forward on immigration reform — hit a divisive snag over the mechanisms for a guest worker program.

"Over the Hill Gang" would seem to be a more apropos moniker for these folks, given how out of touch both sides appear to be with the needs of ordinary Americans or employers, if the scenarios for the program they're trying to construct are any gauge at all. Read more...

I've been looking at the Republican National Committee's "Growth and Opportunity Project", released with a certain amount of understatement a couple of days ago. It has been alternatively described as a look forward and as a post-mortem of why the Republicans lost the election. Read more...

In a recent blog I complained of Syracuse University's TRAC analysis "that all too often the most serious Level 1 offenders have only been convicted of traffic violations." Objecting to this depiction and the mindset behind it, I said, "First, we should not assume that traffic offenses are always 'minor'. Vehicular manslaughter, negligent homicide, and driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics all strike me as serious offenses." Read more...

Remember that child's game, "Button, button, who's got the button"? Kids form in a circle, and one child goes around with a button in hand, pretending to drop it into each child's hand in turn, but secretly only puts it into one. Everybody then guesses who has the button. Even the one who has the button guesses somebody else to deflect the truth. Eventually, though, the one who has it must 'fess up if pointed out, and becomes the next to distribute the button.

Well, we seem to have the farcical bureaucratic equivalent of the game going on and, as usual, it involves the ICE-house gang. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), as you know, is the agency within Homeland Security that, under Director John Morton's leadership has become the Keystone Kops of the federal set. Read more...

It is probably obvious to anyone who has read any of my occasional blogs or other writings for the Center that I'm strongly pro-enforcement on the immigration issue. To me, it comes down to what I believe is in the best interest of American society, writ large, and fundamental fairness to all of those intending immigrants who sit patiently abroad waiting for their visa quota number to come up. Read more...

You know those eyeglasses you can buy — called Transitions lenses, I think — that are crystal clear as long as you're in a fairly shady place, but get progressively darker with increasing light until they're sunglasses in bright daylight? That's what I think of when I consider the Obama administration's track record on transparency, contrary to what is promised on the White House website: Read more...

The February 9-10, 2013, weekend print edition of The Wall Street Journal contained an interesting article entitled, "Iranian-American Speaks for Both Sides". The article laid out the story of two naturalized American citizens originally from Iran: Amir Mohamed Estakri and his brother, Amir Ahmad Estakri. Read more...