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...

The following is a special update from our Forrest Gump Department, which is always diligently tracking and bringing to you the latest insanities and inanities on the subject of immigration in these here United States. Read more...

This past December, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report entitled "Border Security: Additional Actions Needed to Strengthen CBP Efforts to Mitigate Risk of Employee Corruption and Misconduct". Read more...

On January 7, the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) — which bills itself as "an independent, nonpartisan think tank dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide" — held a symposium entitled "Immigration Enforcement in the United States: The Rise of a Formidable Machinery".

Alright, I admit it was rude, but I laughed out loud when I read the MPI lead-in announcing the event. "Formidable"? Hardly. This administration has done more to dismantle the effective enforcement of immigration laws — and to use presidential orders to circumvent the proper role of Congress in establishing immigration policy — than any other administration in recent history, perhaps in all of American history. It is the executive branch equivalent of "judicial activism" and, sadly, our legislative leaders appear unable or unwilling to push back and stop the assault on their constitutionally mandated role. Read more...

Those bright, sunny days immediately following reelection of the president seem to be facing the possibility of scattered showers, possibly thunderstorms, where "comprehensive immigration reform" (CIR) is concerned – so, at least, hints the Los Angeles Times in an article published last weekend. Read more...

Last week, The Wall Street Journal broke the story of two brothers, 30-year-old Sheheryar Alam Qazi and 20-year-old Raees Alam Qazi, naturalized United States citizens of Pakistani origin, arrested In Fort Lauderdale by the FBI for plotting to commit terrorist acts involving weapons of mass destruction in the United States. Read more...

Well, the election's over and the drumbeat has begun: "Comprehensive immigration reform now!" "¡Sí, se puede!" Most assuredly by now, virtually everyone understands that "CIR", to use the acronym, is code for amnesty for most of the millions of aliens illegally in the United States. Read more...

The Morning Call, an eastern Pennsylvania newspaper covering the Allentown / Lehigh County vicinity, reported on November 12, 2012, that a federal district court judge had dismissed a tort suit filed by a U.S. Read more...

In July of this year, the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics published an interesting paper entitled "Immigration Offenders in the Federal Justice System, 2010" by Mark Motivans, PhD.

Despite the reference to "2010" in the title, the paper actually documents federal immigration enforcement statistics for 2000-2010. Although, as might be expected, it is written in the somewhat dry style favored by bureaucracies and academia, the report makes for very interesting reading. Read more...

On October 16, the Cuban government made good on an old, until-now unrealized promise to its own citizens: Effective January 14, 2013, they will scrap the requirement that Cuban citizens obtain exit permits before they are allowed to travel outside the country. Read more...

An interesting item was published in the September 27 edition of Capital (a New York-based online publication), which in my view deserves a great deal more attention that it appears to be getting.

According to the article, "While nearly two-thirds of deportation cases nationwide end in the target's removal from the country, the results in New York City have been starkly different. Here, 74 percent of deportation proceedings this year have ended with the immigrant being allowed to stay in the United States." Read more...

The U.S. Treasury Department has announced the designation of the gang Mara Salvatrucha (also known as MS-13) as a transnational criminal organization (TCO). This move shows just how far MS-13 has come over the years, from its start as a group of violent illegal alien thugs from El Salvador making extra money selling weapons to other gangs in Los Angeles, to its status as a significant criminal enterprise with international partners and a diversified portfolio of criminal activity, including bulk cash smuggling and sex-, drug-, and weapons-trafficking. Going after the gang's money and other assets makes perfect sense. But we were a little puzzled that the feds have not also moved to more effectively target the other obvious vulnerability for MS-13 and all TCOs — immigration status and the need to move across borders. Read more...

Controlled fusion — as opposed to fission — of atoms has long been the holy grail of nuclear energy proponents, to date with no success, although physicists have lately made amazing breakthroughs in, for instance, bringing forward evidence of the existence of the elusive Higgs boson.

It would seem that efforts to successfully achieve fusion at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are equally elusive. Read more...

This just in from those sharp-eyed folks in our News of the Weird Department:

Headline News (HLN), a subsidiary of CNN, citing the British Daily Mail newspaper, says that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has contracted with an information technology company to initiate use of a virtual reality Border Patrol Agent named "Elvis" to determine when individuals taken into custody may be lying. Let's call him VBPA Elvis. After all, every government employee has to have some kind of catchy acronym for a job title, right? Read more...