A call into C-Span's Washington Journal today from a former construction worker encapsulated much of the frustration and anger percolating around the immigration debate. The caller told his story to Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., whose response illustrated his belief that the blame lies not with illegal immigrants, but with the employers who exploit them by paying poor wages. Here are parts of the comments of both men: Read more

Once in a while it is nice to see the wealthy and pampered – like tax-dodging, yacht-owning citizens and their illegal immigrant sidekicks – zapped just like the sweltering peasants at the Arizona border.

That's what happened on Long Island Sound to – I kid you not – the Rich family, their 63-foot private vessel, and two illegal aliens. It was all in the New York Times on July 27. Read more

The legal injunction that blocks key parts of Arizona's law enforcement statute from taking effect doesn't pass the smell test. The ruling reeks of politics, not jurisprudence – in other words, judicial activism. Read more

The effects of immigration on African-Americans were raised several times during this morning's Washington Journal program on C-Span. Here are some of the the comments. Note the repeated expressions of disappointment with politicians. Read more

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1. Illegals not always deported
2. AZ immigration protests begin
3. Border deaths fill Tuscon morgue
4. AZ prepares lawsuit appeal
5. GOP: ruling hurts Dems Read more

One broader lesson people need to take away from the legal wrangling over the Arizona law: Any enforcement provisions of "comprehensive immigration reform" that Congress might pass would be tied up in the courts for years. As my colleague Steve Camarota wrote recently: Read more

The other local immigration law that was set to go into effect tomorrow is in the town of Fremont, Nebraska. The ordinance was approved by voters last month and would have prohibited the hiring of, or renting to, illegal aliens.

But the town council there voted last night to suspend the measure because of the prohibitive costs of fighting the ACLU and MALDEF in court: Read more

It's no surprise that key parts of the Arizona immigration law were just suspended by Judge Bolton, pending the full trial. Assuming the state doesn't give up, which it won't, everyone understood this would take several years and reach the Supreme Court. It’s a stupid way to make policy, but with ACLU lawyers (both those inside and those outside the government) fanatically committed to open borders, there's no alternative.

A 1994 story in the Arizona Republic helps explain the frustration with federal immigration authorities that drove passage of Arizona's controversial new law against illegal immigration. The story also includes a statement from a federal official that foreshadows the Justice Department's current insistence that agents are so busy pursuing criminal illegal immigrants that they must not be diverted by reports of people who are merely illegal immigrants. Read more

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1. Feds oppose AZ lawsuit merger
2. LA union members head to AZ
3. Inspection leads to arrest
4. Housing law suspended in NE
5. Action wanted against sanctuaries Read more

ICE has just opened its Online Detention Locator System (ODLS) and I was curious about its contents and its utility. It tells people on the outside the names of those inside the ICE facilities.

Without having any detailed information on the detention system to compare it with, I found ODLS easier to use, more informative, and more accessible than I had expected. I also found it providing much more data (on different subjects, of course) than what one can glean from its sister agency, USCIS, a point to which I will return later. Read more

The Secure Communities program is intended to make systematic and universal the identification of illegal aliens in police custody — not people pulled over for speeding or broken taillights but those actually booked and fingerprinted. The whole point of the program, politically, is to move away from deporting "ordinary" illegal aliens (i.e., those guilty only of tax crimes, identity-fraud crimes, employment crimes, etc.) and focus only on illegals who have committed "real" crimes. Read more

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1. Nebraska town may suspend law
2. Lawsuits challenge Sec. Comm.
3. Immigration may not help GOP
4. Study: Crop yields and immigration
5. Mexico to send inspectors Read more

The Arizona immigration law is set to go into effect Thursday (unless a judge decides it shouldn't), but it's working already:

The two women are among scores of illegal immigrant families across Phoenix hauling the contents of their homes into the yard this weekend as they rush to sell up and get out before the state law takes effect on Thursday.

Sometimes it is useful to view a public policy dispute from a different angle.

Let's compare, for instance, the posture of the restrictionists on the mainland of the U.S. to those in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Those on the mainland say we should try to enforce the immigration law, and hold down the annual arrivals of new immigrants. There is an unspoken assumption that the new arrivals and the long-term residents will all face the same tax laws. Similarly, everyone assumes that any U.S. citizen can be a state's governor. Read more

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1. ICE deportations hit record
2. Report on mentally ill detainees
3. Anger drove AZ crackdown
4. States focus on enrollment of aliens
5. Illegals promote black market Read more

Big disgraces in the immigration field beget little disgraces.

I was doing something on the internet the other day and was reminded of the long-term foolishness of America's Visa Lottery – it gives away 50,000 green cards every year to people who have no connection to the U.S., who are not refugees, and who bring neither needed skills nor money. They simply add to our burgeoning population. That's the big disgrace. Read more

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1. Gov't pledges to speed visas
2. Judge to decide on SB1070
3. NY schools under fire
4. NE town sued over enforcement
5. AZ co. candidate on issue Read more

Lawyers defending the people of Arizona and the state's new immigration law sought the Center's help in countering the Obama administration's claims that the law would disrupt their careful balance of immigration law enforcement priorities, unduly burden DHS agencies, and cause harassment of lawful visitors and beneficiaries of humanitarian programs, such as battered women. Read more

I participated a panel on the Arizona law, and immigration more generally, at the libertarian Cato Institute yesterday; the video of the event is now up, assuming you want to watch all 82 minutes of it. Much of the discussion was the usual stuff, but two things stood out.

First, one of the panelists, Cato's Tim Lynch, spoke about how the Arizona law will lead to false arrests and showed an excerpt from this video: Read more

There's too much wrong-headed commentary about immigration to bother with most of it, but the op-ed in today's Washington Post by the last two heads of the INS is worth comment, both because of the venue and the particular myths its authors purvey. Read more

There is exactly one continuing means-tested federal assistance program that deliberately provides benefits to illegal aliens and nonimmigrants – that is WIC, which stands for women, infants and children.

Yet WIC, a $5 billion a year means-tested program, has been totally ignored in the new USCIS proposed rules which will make it easier for illegal aliens and nonimmigrants to waive fees for substantial immigration benefits which was discussed in a recent blog of mine. Read more

The media has been busy highlighting the supposed moral superiority of law enforcement officers opposed to Arizona’s SB 1070. Read more

Should you have to write a little memorandum to the government, in English, if you want a lifelong immigration benefit and cannot or do not want to pay, say, $470 for it?

The benefit could, for instance, convert you from illegal to legal status, and then allow you to work legally in the U.S. – maybe for the rest of your life. Or it could make you a citizen. Read more

William Finnegan is an accomplished journalist for the New Yorker. In the past year he has written penetratingly about Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and about a crime syndicate in the Mexican state of Michoacan. But his essay in the current New Yorker, under the headline "Borderlines," accomplishes little to inform public concerns about illegal immigration, especially in Arizona. Read more

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1. White House hedging bet
2. Nat'l Guard to deploy
3. Countries wish to join suit
4. AZ governor allocates funds
5. UT expands list probe Read more

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is pressing for amnesty, in part to qualify the current 11 million illegal aliens for public health (and other) programs. A report in Politico says these lawmakers secured the Obama administration's commitment to sweep illegals into taxpayer-funded health coverage as a condition for their votes for the health care bill: Read more

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1. CIS video reveals AZ pipeline
2. Obama finds amnesty support
3. U-Visa program reaches limits
4. Mid-Atlantic detention center opens
5. Chinese birth tourism increase Read more

Like Mexican government officials, Mexican journalists do not hesitate to express anger and demand corrective action when they believe their countrymen have been abused by the Border Patrol. But for years they have paid scant attention to the abuses suffered on a much greater scale by the Central Americans who pass through their country on their way to the U.S. border. Read more

KSAZ FOX 10 in Phoenix, Arizona produced a mini-documentary and news piece on, "Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 2: Guns, Drugs and 850 Illegal Aliens," and asked me to provide some background and policy analysis of our film. The producers also asked me about comments made last evening on FOX National News with Greta Van Susteren by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano that our borders are “more secure than ever”. My answers are in this clip below. Read more