Immigration Blog

I read Sen. Reid's call to address the "challenge of fixing our broken immigration system" with great amusement.Sen. Reid correctly notes that, "We have to replace this broken system with one that works."The paradox, one that I have noted here previously, is that fixing the immigration system must be done by the same folks that broke it in the first place: Congress.

A non-profit nation of hundreds of taxpayer funded 501(c)(3)s has grown up around refugee resettlement in the U.S. A recent government-sponsored study finds "U.S. resettlement communities are awash with ECBOs that exist in name only but provide little meaningful assistance." ("Practitioner Lessons from Ethnic Community Self-Help Programs," ISED Solutions, August 2009) Some of the ECBOs (Ethnic Community Based Organizations) apparently exist only to bring in grants and contracts for themselves.

Sometimes it is useful to review one of those legal battles in which a clearly illegal alien delays his well-deserved deportation – in this case, for nearly 10 full years.In many instances, of course, a not-so-deserving alien never leaves.The alien in this case is named Paulin Shabaj; he is a citizen of Albania. Here's his story:

Sources inside and outside ICE report that Suzie Barr, the Napolitano crony who is now ICE Chief of Staff, has chosen the controversial former Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt to head up ICE's Office of State and Local Cooperation, pending completion of the background check. This is an interesting pick, because Hurtt is well-known as an outspoken critic of ICE/local partnerships who kept Houston as a sanctuary city, even as several of his officers lost their lives to illegal alien criminals who cycled repeatedly in and out of HPD custody without being reported to ICE.

The issuance of a new, more secure green card and a study by CIS Director Research Steven Camarota were among the topics discussed at this morning's hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.The sole witness was Alejandro Mayorkas, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), in the Department of Homeland Security.

Related Content: Arizona Law SB 1070 Topic PageWhen millions of Americans signed on to Yahoo this morning, they had a chance to see a pair of starkly contrasting Associated Press stories on immigration.

I have finished reading Moving Millions: How Coyote Capitalism Fuels Global Immigration by Jeffrey Kaye. This book documents the economic forces that drive immigration. For those who are not intimately involved in the issues of employment-based immigration, this book is likely to be an eye-opener.

Utah's Republican Party conventions have not been good to elected officials who have consistently sided with the advocates for illegal aliens.U.S. Sen. Robert Bennett and two senior state legislators were denied the opportunity to even run for the seats they currently hold. Two state legislators with spotty records on immigration-related issues were forced into primary election contests and four other legislators whom illegal aliens counted as friends retired from the Utah House of Representatives.

While USCIS encourages corporations to hire more foreign H-1B workers on its website, Alberta, the oil-rich Canadian province, has done the reverse and, citing the economic slowdown, has closed its borders to the same kind of high-tech foreign workers.

For those of us who support the principle that American citizenship should have value and that American workers should not be replaced by foreign workers in their own country, good news came on Saturday: Sen. Bob Bennett has lost his re-nomination fight in Utah.