By Jerry Kammer, CIS.org

When PBS asks someone like Jon Meacham — contributing editor to Time magazine, former editor of Newsweek, television pundit, and author of a Pulitzer-prize winning biography of Andrew Jackson — to write an essay on immigration, the result is likely to be a measure of elite media thinking on the topic.

And so it was with Meacham’s commentary at the end of last Friday’s “Need to Know” program. It was a call to welcome the world. It was also devoid of any recognition of how unconstrained immigration policy has become since passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.

Ostensibly, Meacham’s essay was an argument for more immigrant visas for high-skilled foreigners educated in the United States. But most of his message — and all of the accompanying visual imagery — was a homily about the backlash against the influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century.

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By Jon Feere, CIS.org

A high-immigration group called the National Foundation for American Policy has released a new report on the alleged costs of ending the current application of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause. The Center for Immigration Studies has published a number of reports on birthright citizenship and it is clear that neither Congress nor the Supreme Court has ever mandated that children born to illegal and temporary aliens must be considered U.S. citizens under the Constitution. Rather, the permissive policy is the result of agency policymaking. At least one influential jurist, Circuit Judge Richard Posner, feels that the policy could be ended through a simple act of Congress. This debate, as well as the history of the Citizenship Clause is detailed in our report, “Birthright Citizenship in the United States: A Global Comparison”.

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by Daniel Pipes*

On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli doctor of American origins, went to the mosque at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and murdered 29 Muslims with an automatic weapon before being overwhelmed and himself killed. This massacre prompted conspiracy theories and riots in Muslim circles, including accusations that the government of Israel stood behind Goldstein, an allegation that strenuous denunciations of his attack by the Israeli government did not fully deflect.

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By Jessica Vaughan, CIS.org

The Obama administration’s half-hearted and spotty record of immigration enforcement at the workplace creates a big vacuum for state and local lawmakers to jump into. E-Verify mandates are a great start. State employer auditing programs are another effective tool, either in lieu of an E-Verify mandate or to enhance compliance with E-Verify and other requirements. Statistics from such initiatives in South Carolina demonstrate the value of employer auditing at the state and local level.

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by David J. Rusin*

Claude Guéant, the French interior minister, sparked a firestorm last month when he praised Western values as “superior” to the oppressive ones found elsewhere, namely the Islamic world. Yet the controversy did more to spotlight an area in which the West clearly trails its rivals: self-confidence. If a government official cannot extol the unique virtues of freedom and equality that define Western life without being cast as a bigot by the politically correct, how can they be safeguarded against the highly motivated forces of Islamism, which doubt neither the superiority of their own principles nor the righteousness of imposing them on others?

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By Gary Gerofsky

Did you know that the murder of a Rabbi and children in Toulouse, the mutilation and killing of a Rabbi and his pregnant wife in Mumbai, the beheading of Daniel Pearl, and all wars and terror in the Middle East happened because Israel exists? Did you also know that Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism because, without Jews, there would be no cause for people to hate Jews? How’s that for reasoning?

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by Andrew Whitehead

Since the founding of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the majority of non-Muslim citizens of the United States have been constantly accused of “Islamophobia” (a word created as a propaganda tool used by CAIR), “racism” (even though there is no such race as “Muslim”), and “intolerance” (a word used by many groups to describe those who disagree with them without using words of substance or evidence to back up their accusations).

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Question: What enabled the slaughter of Jewish children and soldiers in the French city of Toulouse by a Muslim steeped in radical, victim-centric, warped Islamist ideology? Answer: People like EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton, an apologist for terrorist hate. She is the epitome of ignorant, bigoted, cowardly, politically correct, morally relativistic trash allowed by decadent, fearful Westerners to run amok at the top of their societies. This combination of a disconnected public and crazy political elite creates an atmosphere where lying bullies — Islamo-fascist-leftists — trample Western values, commit horrendous acts of ultra-violence, and shut down free speech. Meanwhile, people of conscience have to fight to even be heard, and sometimes fear for and lose their lives. This is the upside-down, Animal Farm-like world to which Westerners are acclimating. How could the depraved Ashton become EU Foreign Policy Chief? Just read about her — she’s lost her mind:

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A briefing by Mark Durie*

Mark Durie is a theologian, human rights activist and pastor of an Anglican church. He has published many articles and books on the language and culture of the Acehnese, Christian-Muslim relations and religious freedom. A graduate of the Australian National University and the Australian College of Theology, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992. On January 18, he spoke to the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia.

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By John Thompson* and Sara Akrami*

The recent deaths of Iranian defence scientists have allowed the Iranian regime in Tehran to weep copious tears and sputter outrage about the inequity of assassination as a political tool. One might think that they would react with envy. Assassination has been one of the “outreach” tools of the ayatollahs and their regime in Iran since the early days of the Revolution. When the Islamic Republic of Iran was established in 1979, it had two strategies to eliminate its opponents. At home, it killed its internal opponents — murdering 7,900 of them in its first five years alone using techniques many totalitarian regimes have employed, such as mass executions, torture, “disappearances,” and “accidents.” Abroad, it used its embassies and cultural offices to host killers and sent them out after prominent critics. Many of these critics living overseas were Iranian intellectuals and activists who had escaped from Iran after the establishment of the regime. In addition to employing terror against its own citizens and émigrés, the Iranian government has also claimed victims from other nationalities. The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the world’s most significant sponsors of terrorism. During its 33 years of existence, it has continually instigated violence elsewhere and pursued indirect war through the use of terrorism throughout the Middle East, Africa, and both North and South America.

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by David J. Rusin*

Federal departments and agencies tasked with safeguarding the U.S. must first safeguard themselves against Islamist infiltration. Recent news items about Muslims having security clearances rejected or revoked suggest that at least some government entities are forgoing political correctness and taking this problem seriously. More need to follow suit, but the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is determined to make life difficult for them.

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by Daniel Pipes and Cynthia Farahat*

When Egypt’s Lower House convened on Jan. 23, Islamists held 360 out of its 498 seats, or 72 percent. This astounding figure, however, reflects less the country’s public opinion than it does a ploy by the ruling military leadership to remain in power.

In a recent article (”Egypt’s Sham Election,” Dec. 6) we argued that just as Anwar El-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak in the past “tactically empowered Islamists as a foil to gain Western support, arms, and money,” so do Mohamed Tantawi and his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) “still play this tired old game.”

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By Harsh Pant

Pakistan is facing a serious crisis today and despite the proclivity of the nation’s elites to blame external forces, the wounds are largely self-inflicted. India is not the biggest danger Pakistan faces today. It is the extremist groups that the security establishment has nurtured over the years that have turned against the Pakistani state. The Pakistani army has yet to reconcile itself to the idea that Afghanistan should be something other than its strategic backyard, under the control of its proxies such as the Taliban, and continues to struggle with its paranoia that India is encroaching on Afghanistan to encircle its old enemy. As a result, Pakistan is unable to take corrective measures that can bring some semblance of stability to a conflict-ridden nation.

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By Fern Sidman

On Sunday morning, December 11th, over 50 people gathered at the Israeli Consulate in New York to vocally express their revulsion at the recent decision by the Israeli government to demolish the community of Givat Aryeh. Organized by Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI), its executive director Helen Freedman who just returned from Israel on the organization’s bi-annual Chizuk mission, told those gathered, “Just two weeks ago, we celebrated the dedication of a new Torah scroll that was presented to the residents of Itamar and Givat Aryeh in the Shomron by its sponsor, AFSI member Jack Ross. Now we are totally disheartened to learn that the destruction of this community was orchestrated by a decision of the Netanyahu/Barak government.”

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By David North, CIS.org

The Inspector-General of the Social Security Administration (SSA) has taken a look at one aspect of the H-1B program.

He brought to bear unlimited access to SSA’s huge electronic earnings data system, and deployed a staff of four to dig into it. So far, so good.

But he has done so with his blinders on and, as a result, has found little of interest.

As a researcher who, from time to time, had limited access to the same wonderful data set, which covers all earnings reported to the Social Security Administration, I find the latest IG report, “H-1B Workers’ Use of Social Security Numbers (A-08-11-11114)“, to be deeply disappointing.

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