Immigration Blog

The Human Toll of Meat Packing

By Jerry Kammer, October 9, 2009

In visits to the communities around six Swift meat packing communities for a CIS report published earlier this year, I was struck at how often I heard workers and former workers use similar language to express their bitterness about safety conditions. They would say, "This plant doesn’t just kill animals. It kills people, too."

Now comes a report from Nebraska Appleseed, a non-profit legal organization, on the results of its survey of 455 workers in five meat-packing communities across the state. Read more...

'Another Such Victory Will Undo Me!'*

By Stephen Steinlight, October 9, 2009

*Pyrrhus of Epirus describing his costly victory over the Romans at Asculum, 279 BC

The Hill newspaper, in "Appropriators deal blow to border fence," reports House conferees killed a $42.8 billion appropriation in the Senate's version of the 2010 Homeland Security spending bill, an amendment inserted in July by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) adopted with majority Republican support and the votes of 21 Democrats. Read more...

Mexico's Internal Walls

By Jerry Kammer, October 8, 2009

Mexican government officials complain bitterly about the wall that the U.S. has constructed along sections of the southern border to discourage illegal immigration. Today, writing in the Mexican newspaper El Universal about the brutal social and economic inequalities that propel much illegal immigration, columnist Ricardo Rocha notes the construction of "stately versions of Chinese walls so the poor don't bother the rich" in the city of Monterrey.

Here are some of Rocha's other metrics of inequality in his country: Read more...

California Senate Embraces Lawlessness

By Jon Feere, October 8, 2009

The California state Senate recently passed a resolution in support of non-enforcement of immigration law. It was authored by State Senator Gilbert Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), a man who has made a name for himself by constantly pushing for driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. The resolution’s purpose is to “urge Congress and the President of the United States to declare an immediate moratorium” on the enforcement of certain immigration laws until an amnesty is passed on the federal level. While the resolution does not have the force of law, it does illustrate how radical some lawmakers are in their support for open borders. It passed the Senate by a margin of 23-14. Read more...

Fuzzy Words Foul Up the Immigration Policy Debate

By David North, October 7, 2009

The use of deliberately fuzzy terms -– "undocumented worker" is my favorite -– continues to cloud the immigration policy debate, always to the detriment of the restrictionists' position.

A good example popped up in yesterday's New York Times; the headline was "Ideas for Immigrant Detention Include Converting Hotels and Building Models". In the article the term "noncitizens" was used to define the inmates. Read more...

Martinez's Warning to Republicans

By Jerry Kammer, October 7, 2009

As someone who lived in Arizona in the 1990s, when a large influx of illegal immigrants were met with a backlash that continues today, I agree with the warning from recently retired GOP Sen. Mel Martinez in today's Washington Post. It comes in a column from Michael Gerson, who writes of the electoral risks to Republicans if they are associated with virulent criticism of illegal immigrants. Read more...

Lou Dobbs Segment on 287(g) Changes

By Jon Feere, October 7, 2009

I appeared on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight for a segment on the Obama administration's changes to 287(g), a highly-successful program that allows state and local law enforcement officers to assist ICE in carrying out immigration enforcement. Many activist groups opposed to enforcement of our immigration laws are seeking to end the program. Read more...

Catch and Release Redux

By Janice Kephart, October 6, 2009

The Obama Administration is ignoring hard and unpleasant lessons learned from decades of prior failed immigration policies. "Alternatives to Detention" (ATD) is just another way to say "Catch and Release," which was the thorn in the side of the prior administration until they stopped it and put rule of law in place. Although managing detention facilities and their population well is a good goal, simply doing it by reducing the illegal population and dispersing them back into American communities does not help enforce immigration law or make our communities more secure. Read more...

More Illegal Aliens, More House Seats and Electoral Votes

By Ronald W. Mortensen, October 6, 2009

Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution mandates that a census be conducted every ten years in such manner as Congress shall direct. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution further states that "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed." Read more...

The Immigration Managers - The Departments of Labor and Justice

By David North, October 6, 2009

The principal U.S. migration management agency has done a lot of institutional migrating over the decades. During the late 19th Century, as the Bureau of Immigration, it was first in the Department of the Interior, and then in the Treasury Department. It moved to the no-longer-existing Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903, and then became one of the main parts of the Department of Labor when it was created in 1913. Read more...