New Estimate Shows Another 1.4 Million Family Members Could Also Stay

By Mark Krikorian, CIS

The Senate is currently considering the DREAM Act (S.2205). Some have argued that only 60,000 illegal immigrants would be granted amnesty annually under the Act, but a new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of 2007 Census Bureau data shows millions of potential beneficiaries.

# An estimated 800,000 illegal immigrants under age 17 have been here long enough to qualify for legalization under the DREAM Act. There are a total of 1.7 million illegal aliens estimated to be under age 17.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

As Hillary moves towards the political middle, her lead in the polls over her Democratic rivals has widened, and her rivals have moved further left. Hillary is smart enough to know that America’s strength lays in the center. Her Democratic rivals are just, well, plain loons. Here’s Edwards:

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards has spent two weeks questioning Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s judgment in voting to declare the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. On Sunday, he questioned her sincerity. Last month, Clinton was one of 75 senators who voted for a resolution giving the president the authority to call the guards terrorists. She has characterized the vote as a way to gain leverage for U.S. negotiations with Iran, but some of her rivals, including Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama, argue it amounted to giving Bush another blank check to go to war. …

The Revolutionary Guard IS a terrorist organization. Edwards position will gain him about as many votes as Obama’s foolish call for “allowing illegal immigrant students to receive college aid.”

(more…)

By Mark Krikorian*

There are two questions to consider when deciding whether to stop welcoming illegal aliens. First, do we even need the flow of labor that illegal immigration represents? And second, whatever immigration policy we do adopt, can it be enforced if we make it easy to live here illegally, as we do now?

The answer to both questions is No.

There is no economic need for foreign labor, legal or illegal. There are an estimated 12 million illegal aliens in the United States, with perhaps 7 million of them in the labor market — either working or actively looking for work. But contrary to myths about “jobs Americans won’t do,” there is no major job category that is dominated by these illegal workers. The Census Bureau groups all jobs in the country into 473 categories, and in 2003-2004, only three small categories had even the tiniest majority of immigrant workers, legal and illegal. The large majority of America’s taxi drivers, housekeepers, janitors, dishwashers, landscapers and construction laborers are native-born Americans.

(more…)

by Uriya Shavit*

The veil has become the center of a European fight over how to balance expressions of Muslim identity with the Western idea of citizenship.[1] How can states achieve a balance between republicanism and minority rights? Can majorities in liberal, Western nation-states, force a dress code upon minorities? While Muslim societies have debated various garments and coverings for women through the twentieth century,[2] the issues are broader. Often, Muslim commentators in the West couch their arguments in the Western discourse of the balance between individual rights and public interest.[3] However, the personal freedom versus integration debate is only one context of the polemic; another is the dichotomy between two types of nationality and between two sources of legitimacy. Here, Muslim scholarship on migration sheds more light than Western political theory.

(more…)

By Mark Krikorian*

(Click here to read “Fixing Immigration”)

I was delighted to see Yuval Levin engage the issue of immigration, particularly its most basic element — the shape of our policy for legal immigration — rather than the conceptually simpler matter of enforcement. I also welcome some of Mr. Levin’s specific recommendations, especially that family-based immigration should extend only to the nuclear family and that assimilation into American society should be given a higher priority.

(more…)

New Report Takes Detailed Look at Different Levels of Admissions

WASHINGTON (August 30, 2007) — A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies projects how different levels of immigration would impact the future size of America’s population. The findings, carefully modeled on earlier projections by the Census Bureau, show that the current level of immigration will add 105 million to the population by 2060, while having a small effect on the aging of society.

The report, entitled ‘’100 Million More: Projecting the Impact of Immigration on the U.S. Population, 2007 to 2060,'’ will be online at http://www.cis.org. Among the other findings:

(more…)

New Report Takes Detailed Look at Impact of Different Levels of Admissions

WASHINGTON (August 2007) — New projections from the Center for Immigration Studies show that the current level of immigration (legal and illegal) will add more than 100 million people to the nation’s population by 2060. The report also shows that immigration has only a small impact on slowing the aging of American society.

While population growth has not been at the center of the immigration debate, polls show the public is deeply concerned about issues related to population size, including congestion, sprawl, preservation of open spaces, and greenhouse gas emissions.

(more…)

The White House thinks it’s calling America’s bluff

By Mark Krikorian*

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

This Mencken sentiment appears to be the guiding idea behind the administration’s announcement Friday of stepped-up immigration enforcement. After its relentless six-year campaign for amnesty crashed and burned in June at the hands of the common people, the White House has come up with a new plan: to start enforcing some of the laws they should have been enforcing all along, and so thoroughly scare the public with the consequences that there will be a popular groundswell for amnesty that will finally vindicate the administration position. You can almost hear the president thinking, “be careful what you wish for.”

(more…)

By Naresh Raghubeer, Canadian Coalition for Democracies

Last week, Ontario Auditor-General Jim McCarter reported that the province’s Immigration and Citizenship Ministry has been dispensing millions of dollars in grants to ethnic groups under a process that is “not open, transparent or accountable.” In many cases, groups got money simply because their members were chummy with ministry insiders. “In essence, the decisions behind ‘who got what’ were often based on conversations, not applications,” Mr. McCarter concluded.

(more…)

By Mark Krikorian*

“If someone else has a better idea, I’d love to have them give it to us.” That was John McCain, challenging his fellow Republican presidential candidates in early June to offer an alternative to the amnesty bill he helped craft with Ted Kennedy. Well, here’s a better idea: enforce the law.

Homeland-security secretary Michael Chertoff says it can’t be done under existing law: “Give me the tools to do it,” he said in a recent pitch for the amnesty bill, which also promises some future improvements in enforcement.

This is a conceit. Many statutory tools already exist to make enormous headway against illegal immigration. But, for his entire administration, George W. Bush has presided over what can only be described as a Silent Amnesty, refusing to enforce the law as it’s written today, and even taking steps to help illegal aliens embed themselves in American society.

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

Those of us who support legal immigration won a small victory today, but the battle is just beginning. “A fragile bipartisan compromise that would legalize millions of unlawful immigrants suffered a setback Thursday when it failed a test vote in the Senate, leaving its prospects uncertain…” But “the measure…got a reprieve when Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he would give it more time before yanking the bill and moving on to other matters.” This “compromise” is President Bush’s pet, and would open the floodgates to illegal immigration. The President is really looking to ensure a cheap supply of labor, even tough he cloaks his aims in other language (sophistry). His plan is basically an amnesty that rewards people who have illegally entered the U.S. What we really need is legal and sustainable immigration, not an illegal tidal wave.

(more…)

Newest Data Shows Latin American Immigrants Make Heavy Use of Welfare

By Mark Krikorian

WASHINGTON (June 6, 2007) — As they debate legalization for illegal immigrants, Senators would do well to keep in mind the most recent data on welfare use by the people in question. According to the Department of Homeland Security, nearly 60% of illegal aliens are from Mexico and 80% of the total are from Latin America as a whole. A new Center for Immigration Studies analysis of 2006 Census Bureau data, which includes legal and illegal immigrants, shows use of welfare by households headed by Mexican and Latin American immigrants is more than double that of native households. Among the findings:

(more…)

By Andrew L. Jaffee

Despite evidence to the contrary, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton fed his own officers to the dogs at a press conference held yesterday. Obviously, his career advancement comes before officer safety. Bratton stated that a “‘command and control breakdown’ and poor officer communication fueled violence” between police officers and demonstrators at a May 1 immigration rally in MacArthur Park. Members of the press were caught in the middle. But the LAPD’s own “transmissions, video footage and dozens of interviews from command staff” show that some of the demonstrators violently attacked police, according to a report aired on NPR yesterday (re: an “aggressive group of rock throwing demonstrators”). Jack Dunphy of the National Review has “spoken with people who were directly involved and [has] pieced together what [he is] confident is an accurate if incomplete description of the events:”

(more…)

New Report Corrects Misconceptions About High-Tech Visa

By Mark Krikorian *

WASHINGTON (May 2007) — There is much discussion of reorienting the legal immigration flow toward “highly skilled” workers, the kind of workers admitted by the H-1B visa program. That visa, which is theoretically temporary but often serves as a stepping-stone to permanent residency, is widely used by high-tech employers and is the frequent subject of debate as available slots are snapped up within hours and lawmakers call for higher limits.

(more…)

by Steven A. Camarota*

The argument is often made that immigrants have a stronger commitment to traditional family values than do native-born Americans. However, birth records show that about one-third of births to both groups are now to unmarried parents. Moreover, unmarried immigrants are significantly more likely than unmarried natives to give birth. Illegitimacy may be especially problematic for children of immigrants because they need strong families to adjust to life in America.

(more…)