Immigration Blog

The February issue of the British-based magazine Aviation Security International features an in-depth article laying out in detail the 9/11 Commission recommendations that, if implemented, could have directly affected the success of Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab's boarding of Flight 253 to Detroit on

From a Mexican friend of a friend, who titles the video below Trafficking Drugs in Bottles of Water and notes how clever this method of transporting drugs is. Everyone carries water, especially those crossing the southwest from Mexico. How easy, convenient, and terribly unsuspicious.

Four score and nine years ago our forefathers did something doubly stupid.Not only was the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 clearly racist with its country-of-origin quotas, it also introduced a structural defect into our immigration system that has haunted us ever since.

The British Government is going to introduce a little behavior-modification into their citizenship (naturalization) screening process.The London Telegraph reports that the art of queuing – which the Brits are so good at – will become part of their citizenship tests.

There's new proof that the Obama administration is soft on immigration enforcement. Fewer illegal aliens were detained in the final three months of 2009. The drop in detentions shows that the new administration is willing to let illegal immigration slide for aliens who don't have a rap sheet. Easing off of those detentions means ICE has returned to "catch and release" for the vast majority of illegal entrants.

The Obama Administration has taken one step forward, and another step back, in two released regulations about nonimmigrant workers.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will be in Mexico City February 16-18 for talks on airline security, according to a DHS press release.While she's there will she raise the issue of interior repatriation of the illegal aliens caught at the U.S./ Mexico border? Probably not, and that's a shame. (The word immigration is not mentioned in the press release.)

On February 4, a federal appeals court ruled that a Rhode Island state trooper had acted reasonably when questioning foreign nationals he encountered on a traffic stop, and in contacting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) upon discovering that they were illegal aliens en route to work.

In 2008, 53 percent of all households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) with one or more children under age 18 used at least one welfare program, compared to 36 percent for native households with children. Immigrant use of welfare tends to be much higher than natives for food assistance programs and Medicaid. Use of cash and housing programs tends to be very similar to natives. A large share of the welfare used by immigrants is received on behalf of their U.S.-born children. But even households with children comprised entirely of immigrants still have a welfare use rate of 47 percent.

Linda Chavez and I have had our disagreements, so take this for what it's worth, but a paragraph in her column today was deeply disturbing, all the more so for its casualness. In listing lessons she learned from weathering the snow storms, she wrote: