By David North, CIS.org

You have heard all about sanctuary cities, and some states’ refusal to cooperate with the Secure Communities program, and state-sanctioned tuition breaks and driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, but there is a new wrinkle in state-sabotage of immigration enforcement.

It comes to us from Washington State, one of three states that still issue driver’s licenses to illegals.

I find it devious; others may find it creative.

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By Janice Kephart, CIS.org

The light is getting brighter and the resolution starker on the “no apprehension policy” being imposed on Border Patrol agents by their superiors: it may be part of an emerging “un-border” policy based on a view that we are currently experiencing “acceptable levels of illegal immigration”, which logically means we can reduce the numbers of Border Patrol on the ground.

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By Malcolm Pearl, CIS.org

Malcolm Pearl is a pseudonym for a Foreign Service officer who has served abroad as a consular officer.

Summary

One aspect of the debate over immigration concerns how to curb the number of children born to temporary or illegal alien residents in the United States who then become U.S. citizens, based on the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S Constitution. Trying to pass legislation that changes birthright citizenship rules likely will face several legal and political challenges. A smaller step that can go long way in reducing the problems associated with this practice, and one fraught with fewer potential land mines, is to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) to detect, deter, and penalize foreigners who come to the United States on tourist or other temporary visas for the purpose of giving birth and returning home. Presently there is no prohibition, nor concerted U.S. government effort to stop, individuals from taking advantage of our liberal citizenship policies in order to make their children instant U.S. citizens.

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By David North, CIS.org

I suppose it is progress when one of the State Department’s alien worker programs decides that foreign college students can no longer be used as rickshaw operators, or in their words: “as pedicab or rolling chair drivers”.

It certainly is a refreshing bit of transparency when the department admits that its Summer Work Travel program had sometimes been used to staff “money laundering, money mule schemes and Medicare fraud”, though no details are provided.

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By Jerry Kammer, CIS.org

Fox News recently made an exclusive report confirming that Border Patrol and Homeland Security officials are manipulating apprehension figures.

That is, border security agencies are forcing Border Patrol officers not to apprehend aliens attempting to cross the Mexican border illegally. You read that right: Let them go, never touch them.

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By Jerry Kammer, CIS.org

When I read last Sunday’s New York Times cover piece on pioneering and polemical immigration restrictionist John Tanton, I thought immediately of John Higham, the eminent historian and author of the classic study of nativism, Strangers in the Land.

Higham, who died in 2003, had long observed writers like Jason DeParle, who wrote the Times’ piece. In his case, they were fellow liberal academics, historians and social scientists, who had what Higham called “a tendency to fix upon ideology as the critical factor in many a social problem, in the perhaps tenuous hope that the problem will yield to a reasonable solution once the ideological magic is exorcised.”

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By Janice Kephart, CIS.org

In a strange confluence of news surrounding the activities of the Border Patrol, the agents are speaking out quite loudly – through the conduit of local law enforcement that has repeatedly challenged Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s claims that the “border is as secure as it has ever been.” Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu made news that agents in the field are back-channeling complaints to the two sheriffs that they are being told from somewhere high in Customs and Border Protection not to do their jobs fully. Instead, they are to turn around those attempting illegal entry and “scare” them back across the border in order to keep apprehension numbers down – the same numbers the Obama administration is using to justify an unsubstantiated claim that the border is secure and thus the country ready for amnesty. The accusations are harsh, and denied by the administration. Yet I had been hearing these same comments for months myself but lacked sufficient proof to go public.

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James R. Edwards Jr., CIS.org

The seamy side of immigration often gets glossed over, dismissed, or explained away by open-border apologists calling for unfettered legal immigration and unchecked illegal immigration. But an honest look at immigration shows that human sin nature doesn’t stop at the border.

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by Phyllis Chesler

Arizona Judge Roland Steinle has just sentenced Faleh Almaleki to 34½ years in prison. According to live reporting from the courtroom, the judge noted that Almaleki showed no remorse after the murder, that he did not forgive his daughter, that he did what suited his own purpose. The judge also said this was the hardest case he had to face in his six years on the bench. He found no mitigating factors and sentenced Almaleki to 34 and 1/2 years: 15 years for the aggravated assault of Khalaf, 3 and 1/2 years for leaving the scene of an accident, and 16 years for the second-degree murder of his daughter. He was facing a maximum total of 46 years.

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UK Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable is trying to scare Brits into allowing unbridled immigration into their country. He stated the British people, “risked inflaming extremism,” if they dared limit the number of immigrants allowed annually into their own nation. Of course, he is primarily referring to the UK’s restive Muslim immigrant population, which is chock full o’ extremists. Cable is a fool, engaging in placation, appeasement, and inaction to quiet terrorists and their supporters, techniques historically proven to backfire. Cable’s babbling was in response to a long-overdue, very sensible speech given by Prime Minister David Cameron who rightfully wants to limit immigration and its subsequent ramifications:

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By David North, CIS.org

The Board of Immigration Appeals did the right thing on April 8 – and I hope governmental publicists let the Muslim world know about it.

They probably won’t, partially because the Congress may be shutting down the government, and partially because foreign policy writers rarely pay attention to immigration issues, both unfortunate situations.

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By Ronald W. Mortensen, CIS.org

When employers exert their power and influence to safeguard their access to an unlimited supply of illegal alien labor, they put profits ahead of principle and sacrifice millions of American children to identity theft. These employers are like war profiteers who put profits ahead of the interests of their nation and its people.

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By David North, CIS.org

The Department of Labor can bar companies from participating in foreign-worker programs due to misconduct. While the total number of such debarments is small, many of the individual cases are fascinating and grim stories of corporate greed and worker abuse. A state-by-state listing of violators is attached at the end of this report. It should be a tempting menu for investigative reporters seeking good stories and/or for graduate students looking for research topics.

While there are large numbers of employers participating in the various foreign-worker programs run by the U.S. Department of Labor, all starting with the visa letter H, DoL rarely finds one of them violating the rules seriously enough to even temporarily suspend their participation. We have, using various federal sources, compiled an annotated list of the misbehaving companies that have been debarred by DoL: in many cases the nature of the abuse is both fascinating and depressing.

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By Jon Feere, CIS.org

Citing building code violations, police and city inspectors in the city of San Gabriel — a Los Angeles suburb — recently closed three townhouses which had been converted to operate as a maternity center for birth tourists. (See video here.) According to city officials who spoke with the Chinese and Taiwanese temporary aliens, they traveled to the United States for the specific purpose of adding a U.S. passport-holder to their families. The effort had apparently become a lucrative business according to the observations of one neighbor who claims to have seen “groups of women in the advanced stages of pregnancy taking walks in the neighborhood and a lot of cars in the middle of the night.” He explained, “I knew something from the get-go was going on. There was a lot of coming and going.” Officials reportedly found 10 newborns and 12 immigrants inside the home.

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By David North, CIS.org

While I am fond of Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Richard Lugar (R-IN), and Mark Udall (D-CO), all valuable members of the Senate, there is an air of unreality about the immigrant entrepreneur bill that they have introduced.

The twin premises behind the legislation, which I question, are that innovative potential immigrants who want to come to the U.S. are not coming because of the current laws, and that this legislative proposal will take care of that alleged problem. For the details of their proposal, the Startup Visa Act of 2011 (S.565), see here.

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