The president has a long and substantial rhetorical history of harshly singling out and criticizing individuals and groups that disagree with his policy preferences. And no group has been on the receiving end of more of his ire than Republicans.

On the GOP in general, he has said "Their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules." Read more...

"Under immigration pressure" read the graphic that showed a photograph of President Obama on Univision's evening news Monday. It was the theme of a story that Univision anchor Jorge Ramos introduced by noting that "some activists want the president to do much more for the undocumented." Read more...

There have been three little-noticed (in the United States) actions recently about the non-immigrant worker programs that have denied so many jobs to American workers.

A U.S. shipbuilding firm in the South has been charged in our courts with "enslaving Indian workers"; a brave American lawyer in the North is trying to use the class action approach to attack the H-1B program; and a major U.S. user of the H-1B program is laying off U.S. workers while seeking to expand the flows of H-1Bs. Read more...

Like many smart, verbally skilled political leaders, President Obama has a way with words. He is more measured than loquacious, and he is a master of conveying calm, thoughtful deliberation. That leads many people to misidentify him as a moderate or a pragmatist. After all, his calm delivery and measured cadence are the antithesis of how we expect radicals or revolutionaries to speak. Read more...

The current issue of Tiempo Latino, the Spanish-language weekly paper that the Washington Post distributes for free, has an article in which Mexican actor Diego Luna talks about the warning issued by "Elysium", the new movie about illegal immigration on a cosmic scale. Read more...

Remember that handsome, and frankly admirable, young illegal who wants to be a Marine? The one in the Mark Zuckerberg TV ad reported on by my colleague Jerry Kammer?

The impression from the ad is that the nation needs to pass the omnibus immigration "reform" bill so that he can enlist.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Read more...

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus came out against encouraging illegal aliens to return home, signaling an apparent opposition to U.S. sovereignty and the rule of law. Speaking at a RNC meeting in Boston this week, Priebus explained his support for maintaining open-border policies to a reporter, saying:

Using the word "self-deportation", I mean, that's uh, it's a horrific comment to make. I don't think it has anything to do with our party. When a candidate makes those comments, obviously, it hurts us. And so, I think that's a big deal.

If you follow an issue closely in the news, you get a clear picture of how useless the American media is. A few weeks ago I contacted the writer and editor of a wire story on H-1B visas that had a dozen clear factual errors. They responded that they were trying to tell a story. In other words, these writers were not going to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Here is a example from ABC News. Read more...

Part of the pitch for "comprehensive immigration reform" is that it would bring many illegal aliens into the tax system.

The newly legalized would be forced to pay their back taxes, according to S.744 supporters. Read more...

Sure, Mark Zuckerberg is advancing his own economic interests with an ad campaign that expresses concern only for fairness and the national interest. Sure, he would rather hire young foreign computer experts than similarly skilled Americans over 30. But give him some credit. The organization he founded to advocate for Gang of Eight-style immigration reform, FWD.us, is a lot more effective at messaging than Republican Iowa Rep. Steve King. Read more...

Sophistry (soph·ist·ry)
1: subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation.

President Obama is an artful communicator, but like some other smart, modern presidents (Bill Clinton comes to mind), not a particularly direct or truthful one. Read more...

Leonel J. Castillo, Jimmy Carter's INS commissioner, and I tangled on a number of issues, but he was absolutely right on one thing — the outflow of illegals from Mexico assured the continuation in power of Mexico's despots.

His notion was that if the poverty-stricken in that country did not have the option of immigration to the United States, legally or illegally, they would form a critical mass that would force change — perhaps violently — on the Mexican government.

Mexico, after all, has an even more lop-sided distribution of income than we do. As long as the migrants were in the United States they would not disturb the Mexican establishment, but they would send back remittances to family members, providing a social safety net to their relatives that the state did not offer. The whole thing was a win-win situation for Mexico's rulers. Read more...

While media grannies are getting their knickers in a twist over the antics of a Missouri rodeo clown, a cascading, Mariel Boatlift-style immigration emergency may be brewing on the Mexican border. Fox reports:

A sudden influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico requesting asylum is overwhelming immigration agents in San Diego, forcing agencies to rent hotel rooms for some undocumented families and release others to cities around the U.S.

Sophistry (soph·ist·ry)
1: subtly deceptive reasoning or argumentation.

Supporters of the Senate's immigration bill, including the president, have a simple response to the idea that immigration reform would benefit from a more careful and thoughtful consideration than it was given in the Senate: Been there, done that.

The president says that he doesn't want the Senate's bill to get "bogged down in endless debate" and demands action because "We've been debating this a very long time." Read more...

John Sandweg, 38, an Arizona lawyer and Napolitano insider, was recently named acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, following the resignation of John Morton whose extensive use of prosecutorial discretion led to heavy criticism.

Sandweg's record would suggest that he will not seek to turn around the Morton legacy at the unit that handles interior enforcement of the immigration law and the department's detention operations. Read more...

Isn't it interesting that both Democratic and Republican establishment types express great concern about the future of the Republican Party and that they both arrive at the same conclusion — the future of the Republican Party depends on granting 11 million illegal aliens legal status and a pathway to citizenship.

In the case of Democrats and others on the left, the feigned concern is clearly self-serving and disingenuous. Read more...

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...

House Republicans are providing an important public service for Americans by breaking apart the Senate's massive immigration bill in order to better consider the basic elements of the nation's immigration policy puzzle. They are giving the public, and themselves, information and options.

Some ask: Why is this necessary? Haven't we been debating immigration for years? Read more...

Ezra Klein’s recent column on immigration (Here at Bloomberg, then reprinted in the Washington Post) starts this way: “Everything you know about immigration, particularly unauthorized immigration, is wrong.” He then goes on to retail the pet theory of immigration-expansionist sociology professor Douglas Massey to the effect that border Read more...

The grim story of some illegal aliens being forced out of a ship onto a booby-trapped desert island reminded me that there are different levels of immoral conduct in the illegal alien business — I will get back to the island later.

Everyone involved in illegal immigration is, of course, playing a harmful role to the host society, but some of the players are even more unattractive than others. And some classes of players are much more numerous than others.

In general terms I see a four-category system, with the very most unattractive at the bottom of the ranking. The list starts here: Read more...

Two comments in different media venues last week grabbed my attention. The first came from PBS interviewer Charlie Rose. The second on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal", came from the grandson of an immigrant from Mexico.

Rose's comment came in an interview with Max Levchin, the Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of PayPal whose family immigrated to the United States from the Ukraine when he was a young boy. Read more...

Jim Wallis, the head of the politically leftist "evangelical" organization Sojourners, has penned an op-ed that the L.A. Times ran. Wallis's op-ed claims biblical "compassion" requires Christian lawmakers to enact amnesty. He liberally employs the term, playing on emotions and sob stories from illegal aliens. He cites a recent Washington fly-in of 300 "evangelical Christians" who met with 110 legislative offices, mostly Republicans. Read more...

As so often is the case, the murder suspect on the front page of today's Washington Post is an illegal alien, but the paper does not report it.

It was a particularly brutal, senseless murder of a good samaritan by an illegal from Guatemala, a now 27-year-old man. Julio Miguel Blanco Garcia was in a suburban Virginia shopping center with his one-year-old daughter; he asked a woman, apparently a stranger to him, to drive him to the hospital. She agreed; she made a wrong turn and this caused Garcia, apparently crazed by drugs, to think she was about to turn him in to the police. He then repeatedly stabbed her with a knife, as he told police investigators. Read more...

The basic stance of many prominent members of the GOP establishment after the 2012 presidential election can be described as panic. The president's sufficiently successful effort to reenergize his base, including Hispanic voters, coupled with Mitt Romney's lackluster showing among that same group, plus instant but erroneous extrapolations of ethnic and racial population trends, led to almost hysterical worry that Republicans were in a demographic "death spiral" from which they could not recover. Read more...

American policymakers rarely look at the practices of other nations in the field of immigration. That is a shame because much can be learned there.

Today we have two examples, one from Britain and one from Canada, both mixes of useful and non-useful precedents for the United States. Read more...

While holding a town hall meeting, Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.) was caught on video supporting amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, people he calls "undocumented citizens". In response to a question from a woman with illegal alien family members who have been in the country for over 13 years, he illustrated a lack of understanding of immigration policy and unjustifiable faith in the Obama administration to secure the border. Seven problems with his response are analyzed below. Here's his quote: Read more...

It is very clear that President Obama sees himself as a transforming leader, one who bends circumstances to his convictions and preferred goals. However his ability to validate his self-image by real legislative and policy accomplishments has been stymied by the domestic, political, and foreign policy choices he has made. Read more...

The immigrant investor (EB-5) program got another black eye, this time from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the Associated Press.

A USCIS-licensed regional center in South Texas, used as a conduit for funds in the EB-5 program, was raided by the FBI, which hauled away a Mercedes SUV and a "Texas-sized pick-up truck" belonging to the conspirators, according to a local reporter. Both apparently had been purchased with siphoned-off EB-5 funds, invested by wealthy Mexican nationals wanting to flee that country.

The McAllen Monitor called it a "Ponzi Scheme" because new EB-5 investments were used to pay off other, earlier investors. Read more...

President Obama is fast approaching the point at which the record of his aspirations in relation to his actual accomplishments will come into shaper focus, and the extravagant expectations that greeted his candidacy will face the harsh light of reality.

This would be difficult enough for any ambitious person; however, it is very likely intolerable for someone whose presidency and its legacy is meant to be an affirmation of his status as a "great president".

The last two words in quotes are President Obama's, not mine. Read more...

Lawmakers in King County, Wash., are considering a sanctuary policy that the county's own prosecutor says would shield dangerous criminal aliens from federal immigration enforcement. Read more...