Immigration Blog

In a July 31 blog, I commented on the shift of Secretary John Kelly from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to White House chief of staff, noting that this leaves behind his second-in-command, Elaine Duke, to act in his stead — something that concerns me insofar as Duke is a veteran Obama State Department employee with a background in management, not operational matters.

For many years of my life, my daily routine included strapping on a gun and handcuffs before going to work. I was a plainclothes investigator for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), having begun my career in the mid-1970s. By the time I started working for INS, it was a Justice Department agency, having before that been a part of the Treasury and Labor Departments.

According to the "Survey on International Migration of Guatemalans and Remittances 2016", by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 91.1 percent of Guatemalans emigrate to the United States for economic reasons

According to the Arizona Republic, Sen. John McCain is talking immigration reform, apparently as in "comprehensive" immigration reform, a la the failed Gang of Eight Senate bill.

"What would the new immigration bill do to EB-5?" the reporter asked me.

The Center for immigration Studies has consistently been against opening up military recruitment to aliens who would otherwise be ineligible, such as nonimmigrants and, most particularly, those illegally in the country. It is unnecessary to meet recruiting goals, most aliens would not meet the educational or background standards of our modern fighting forces, and it introduces needless risk into the equation of national defense and security.

The pearl-clutching reaction of much of the chattering class to the Cotton-Perdue RAISE Act on immigration has been a wonder to behold. Charles C.W. Cooke discussed the "agree with me or you're against immigrants" silliness in National Review Online, but I wanted to point out something else.

One of President Trump's signature campaign promises was to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a controversial program created by the Obama administration in 2012 that granted work permits, identity documents, and relief from deportation to approximately 800,000 illegal immigrants who arrived as youths. More than six months into Trump's term, however, DACA is still alive, and his administration appears divided over how to proceed. It is time to stop wavering. The president should end a program that is illegal, overbroad, and likely to lead to a more extensive amnesty.

In my recent Backgrounder, "The Massive Increase in the Immigration Court Backlog, Its Causes, and Solutions", I described the role that the increase in continuances in the immigration courts have played in that backlog.

The unstated motivation for the subcontractor was to save money by paying the workers less than it would have to pay citizen and other resident workers. In the best of all possible worlds the subcontractor should be hauled into court. Maybe that will happen, maybe not.