No one expects a president up for reelection not to make use of the benefits of his office. One of them is to announce new examples of federal largess, be they grants for a "promising neighborhood" program; "a major expansion of Skills for America's Future, an industry-led initiative to dramatically improve industry partnerships with community colleges and build a nation-wide network to maximize workforce development strategies, job training programs, and job placements"; or plans to "Win the Future" by making grants for better energy efficiency.

What Americans do not expect is that their president will abruptly and summarily subvert the administrative machinery of the executive branch to further his own reelection prospects. But that is exactly what President Obama did. Read more...

The big picture on the House of Representatives vote on DACA last week — 224 to 201 in favor of its repeal — is that party lines largely held as the restrictionists won with a substantial but not overpowering majority.

A more detailed look shows nine members voted against their party, six Republicans who voted against repeal and three Democrats who voted for; plus nine non-voters. That's a total of 18 House members to watch more closely as the summer progresses.

So, who are they and why did they vote (or not vote) as they did? Read more...

George Soros' dollars are funding a pep rally for the Senate's obese amnesty bill, S. 744. On Wednesday, while the Senate is expected to be debating the legislation, Soros' pet project, "Bibles, Badges, and Business" (BBB), will gather its modern-day prophets of Baal on Capitol Hill to try to create the impression that Christians, law enforcement, and business owners favor mass amnesty, open borders, and the disadvantaging of American citizens who can't find full-time jobs (rightly known as "the least of these"). Read more...

Some excerpts from Sunday morning's "Al Punto" program on Univision, where Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Harry Reid (D-Nev.) responded to questions from host Maria Elena Salinas:

Salinas to Rubio: You said this week that you would be inclined to vote against the legislation that you yourself helped to write unless there were some amendments that would strengthen even more the security of the border. Would you be willing to throw everything overboard? Read more...

The Senate is expected to take its first procedural vote this week on the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill. Aside from its specific provisions, an important characteristic of such "comprehensive" legislation is its size. At 209,000 words in 1,077 pages, the legislation is almost impossible for even the educated layman to comprehend, rendering it inherently undemocratic.

To provide an sense of how long the bill is, here are a few comparisons:

• 27 times longer than the Constitution (7,600 words)
• 14 times longer than the Social Security Act of 1935 (15,000 words)

In recent months, many members of Congress have declared their determination to pass immigration reform legislation that will prevent another wave of illegal immigration.

"I've got one goal," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has emerged as one of the staunchest proponents of the bill he helped draft as a member of the Gang of Eight. "When all is said and done, there will not be a third wave of illegal immigration." Read more...

Let's state the bottom line about S. 744, the Schumer-Rubio-Obama amnesty bill: This legislation is fundamentally flawed and cannot be amended in any way that makes it acceptable.

The central design of the bill is mass amnesty immediately, enforcement never, gallons of red ink committed to be spent for the rest of the amnesty recipients' and new immigrants' lives, and further opening the floodgates to irresponsible levels of immigration. 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...

Inspector Generals (IGs) of government agencies are supposed to be junk-yard dogs in their fierceness and independence. They investigate things and report to the public. It is a useful institution, generally.

But something came over the Internet yesterday morning that puts the independence of the Department of Homeland Security's IG in question. Read more...

Senator Cornyn is floating what he's calling the RESULTS Amendment (I hate these ridiculous acronyms) to tighten up the Schumer-Rubio bill. It's part of the attempt, described by Jonathan Strong over at the Corner, to provide political cover for Republican senators to vote for the amnesty. Read more...

The exodus from the stunning violence and brutal poverty of Central America is a growing tragedy.

The implications for the United States can be seen most readily in South Texas. Many news reports have taken note of the Border Patrol's inability to control the narrow corridor leading northward from the border town of McAllen. Read more...

This blog has previously reported the existence of three different ways that aliens could legitimately buy legal status in the United States.

Now, the ever-generous Gang of Eight has proposed two additional ways to convert money into visas. Read more...

I'm not going to answer the question posed in the headline of this blog. I leave the answer to the consciences of individual Americans who practice the Christian faith, based on how the Holy Spirit guides them according to the Bible's teachings.

What I'm going to do, however, is share four biblical principles I, as a follower of Jesus whose calling has been to the Washington policy arena, have derived for addressing such matters of prudential judgment. I'll apply those criteria to the amnesty issue and the bill presently before the Senate, S.744. Read more...

Jorge Castaneda, the former foreign minister of Mexico, is warning that a "new underclass of the undocumented" will form in the United States unless the immigration bill that will be debated in the Senate beginning next week is amended to provide more visas for low-skilled Mexicans. Read more...

William Finnegan, the accomplished New Yorker writer with an unfortunate tendency to denigrate those who resist large-scale immigration of low-skilled workers, did it again this week. This time he questioned the character and competence of those who claim that an oversupply of immigrant labor has suppressed wages among unskilled workers.

Finnegan called that concern "a venerable argument against immigration, with unfortunate nativist echoes and only a glancing association with the facts." Read more...

Some amnesty proponents on the right have made the ludicrous suggestion that we somehow can wave a magic wand and reduce the U.S. welfare state. That, they suggest, would reduce the humongous costs of amnesty to our country and American taxpayers. Well, don't hold your breath for this cost liability reduction to happen. Read more...

Over the past month an interesting debate has involved liberal commentator Matt Yglesias, who defends large-scale immigration of poor people from Third World countries, and conservative Ross Douthat, who suggests that immigration should be limited in order to avoid overwhelming our ability to provide poor immigrants with the opportunity to incorporate themselves economically and civically into American society. See, for example, here and here.

Their debate has contrasted the liberal tendency to regard national identity as subordinate to our common human identity with the conservative inclination to believe that the nation state and national boundaries are both natural and necessary. Read more...

This morning's New York Times carries another one of those stories on biased academic studies that suggest that immigrants financially help support federal programs, in this case Medicare.

It is one of those studies where the numbers quoted are probably accurate, but they are totally misleading. 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...

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was so determined to ensure that the immigration bill now being debated was "comprehensive" that he added the perfect touch: visa pork for his Irish friends. Now Schumer, long known as the senator from Wall Street for his courting of the big money boys who finance campaigns while they're not throwing the economy into the abyss, is jockeying to be known as the senator from Ireland. Read more...

The revelations concerning the Obama administration's dissembling regarding its preparedness and response to the tragic and avoidable American deaths at Benghazi, the substantial efforts to secretly comb though reporters' communications — both personal and professional — and the IRS' blatant efforts to single out conservative groups for broad and intrusive scrutiny has justifiably called attention to how important it is that the government "do what's right" to borrow a phrase from a trust in government poll question. Read more...

The proposed legalization of some 10 million illegal aliens has been debated as a national issue, as it should be, but the on-the-ground impact will vary tremendously from place to place within America.

To get estimates of the likely state-by-state distribution of those to be amnestied should S.744 become law I turned to an existing data set that, to my knowledge, has not been used for that purpose. Read more...

According to a story in Ireland's largest daily paper, the Senate immigration bill would put the State Department's Summer Work Travel program in jeopardy by imposing a $750 fee on employers or sponsors of the foreign students who come to the United States with J1 visas. 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...

That Fox News poll from my previous post on security first reminded of the vague and theoretical nature of much of the advocacy for the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill. The poll's 66 percent support for amnesty is touted by supporters of S. 744 as proof of public backing for the bill. But the question describes an imaginary bill that requires payment of back taxes and the mastery of English, elements which do not exist in S. 744. And, in an example of how advocates compound the falsehood, Ralph Reed's tweet crowing about the poll said people expressed their support for a measure that said "illegals must pay fines, back taxes, learn English, get job, & go to back of line", when neither fines nor jobs nor a line are ever mentioned in the question. Read more...

A Fox News poll this week illuminates the core issue in the current immigration debate. On the one hand, 66 percent of registered voters chose the following option over sending all illegals back or enrolling them in a temporary worker program:

Allow illegal immigrants to remain in the country and eventually qualify for U.S. citizenship, but only if they meet certain requirements like paying back taxes, learning English, and passing a background check.

The manner in which the Gang of Eight's S.744 reached the floor of the Senate included a mix of both open democracy and behind-the-doors secrecy.

Regardless of the merits of the omnibus immigration bill (which many find wanting) the procedures used to get the bill to, and through, the Senate Judiciary Committee were both interesting and uneven. I have been following the bill for weeks and watched many hours of the Committee's mark-up, during which it considered, at least nominally, hundreds of amendments.

You might say that there were three phases of the bill's history so far. Read more...

The pro-amnesty wing of the Utah Republican Party continues to be rebuffed by thousands of state and county delegates despite incessant attempts to get the party to embrace the Utah Compact's phony amnesty agenda.

In spite of grassroots opposition to amnesty, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch voted for S.744 in the Judiciary Committee, placing the interests of the Salt Lake Chamber (which created the Utah Compact, and threatened him with recall) ahead of the interests of the popularly elected Republican delegates who are largely responsible for returning him to office. Read more...

With all the good will that greeted Barack Obama's historic election as president, he assumed office at the end of a long period of decline in the public's confidence in its government. And he knew it.

Dan Balz, a reporter for the Washington Post wrote this in 2010: Read more...

The Senate Judiciary Committee decided that American spouses are not equal to spouses from India; the latter group is to have rights that will be denied to Americans.

Spouses of U.S. temporary workers in India, for instance, cannot work in the Indian economy, but their opposite numbers (Indians married to H-1B workers from that country employed here) would be allowed to work here legally according to language adopted by the committee this week. Read more...