Free Republic

For the first time in U.S. history, attorneys for an illegal immigrant in Houston are appealing to federal religious freedom laws to annul his impending deportation. Lawyers representing Juan Rodriguez filed a lawsuit Monday on the unprecedented grounds that Rodriguez’s deportation would violate his family’s religious beliefs, specifically a Seventh Day Adventist requirement that requires families to remain together. Rodriguez’s lawyers hope that their lawsuit will be upheld based on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which “ensures that interests in religious freedom are protected.” Rodriguez is represented by Raed González and receives legal counsel from three other members...

Escaped Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman ordered his young wife, Emma Coronel, herself a U.S. citizen and daughter of another Mexican drug lord, to give birth in California to secure U.S. citizenship for his children. The Daily Mail reports that the feds didn’t thwart the Mexican drug cartel anchor baby scheme: “Federal agents wanted to stop her, but had no formal charges to file so had to let her go free.” Another immigration success story — despite the $5 million bounty placed on El Chapo’s head in Mexico, Coronel gave birth to twin daughters on August 15, 2012....

Prosecutors allege that men in Berlin are falsely claiming to be the fathers of refugee children, allowing the mothers to stay in the country in exchange for money. In Germany it is legally possible for men to claim fatherhood of a child, even if they are not the biological father. But Berlin prosecutors said on Tuesday that the system is being abused by female refugees and German men. The pregnant women pay German men to claim fatherhood of their child, meaning the child automatically has a right to German citizenship and the woman obtains a right to stay in the...

More than three quarters of African American births are to unmarried women, nearly double the illegitimacy rate of all other births, according to new federal data. The National Center for Health Statistics said that in 2015, 77.3 percent of non-immigrant black births were illegitimate. The national non-immigrant average is 42 percent, and it was 30 percent for whites. The new numbers were in a Center for Immigration Studies analysis on the births to immigrants. That total is 32.7 percent, but to Hispanic immigrants it is 48.9 percent, according to Steven Camarota, the director of research for the Center for Immigration...

"Although California’s state budget allocates $88.3 billion for K-12 education ($51.6 billion state dollars, the rest is local and federal money), California’s public schools are struggling. California not only has one of the highest student-to-teacher ratios in the country—35% above the national average—but per-pupil spending has been decreasing steadily in recent years. In fact, a recent study ranked California’s K-12 public education system as the 37th worst in the Union, in terms of educational quality—and 49th in terms of school safety. Essentially, California’s public schools are bad and dangerous. This is a serious problem: it hurts our kids, and our...

Mark Levin: "Bill O'Reilly doesn't know what the hell he's talking about"

<p>A Syrian refugee who was hoping to give birth in America may see her dreams foiled by Donald Trump.</p> <p>The Badat family sat crammed together on their couch Sunday morning, desperately trying, call after call, to reach the other side of the world.</p>

The children of undocumented immigrants comprise a growing percentage of school children in the United States, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The share of kindergarten though 12th grade students in public and private schools with at least one undocumented parent has increased from 3.2 percent in 1995 to 6.6 percent in 2009 to 7.3 percent in 2014, Pew reports. As of 2014, there were about 3.9 million K-12 students with undocumented immigrant parents in the nation’s grade schools — up from 3.6 million in 2009. ...more...

20h Gregg Phillips‏ @JumpVote We have verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens. We are joining .@TrueTheVote to initiate legal action. #unrigged  

First-time voter Stephanie Rodriguez, the daughter of illegal immigrants, told an MSNBC reporter Friday she is the only person in her family that can legally vote. Rodriguez, a voter in Arizona, said she cast her vote because of immigration. "I was motivated to vote by my mother, who is not able to vote, as soon as my ballot arrived at home," Rodriguez said. "She was like here it is, Stephanie, you can do it!"

The Pew Research Center released a report last week based on information from the National Center for Health Statistics on birth rates in the United States. Data found within the report could raise concerns over both the economic and cultural ramifications of the birth rates of foreign-born mothers in the United States.  According to the report, "In 2014, about 275,000 babies were born to unauthorized-immigrant parents in the United States, accounting for about seven percent of all U.S. births, and 32 percent of all U.S. births to foreign-born mothers." While that figure represents a decline in the number of babies...

According to a recent Pew Research Center study, roughly one out of every twelve newborns in the United States is a so-called ‘anchor baby.’ An anchor baby is a child born in the U.S. to a foreign women who came here to take advantage of the fact that all persons born in the United States are citizens of the United States. That right is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. There is a problem here. Who is paying for the costs involved? In particular, who is paying the initial and future medical costs, the down-the-road educational costs and any social benefits...

As NewsBuster Geoffrey Dickens has noted, Ben Affleck appeared on yesterday evening's edition of Hardball. And while it's true that the actor/director/Dem activist offered a generally innocuous analysis, he did manage to engage in a bit of religious bigotry. Affleck's foul foray arose in the course of his discussion of the way the various Republican candidates have dealt with the issue of evolution and creationism. Talk turned to the former governor of Arkansas. BEN AFFLECK: I think Huckabee actually framed his position in a much less dramatic way than had been made out. Which was he said it could...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas urged college graduates who seek to "preserve liberty" to do so by fulfilling the duties of their daily vocations rather than attempting to achieve sweeping political goals. "At the risk of understating what is necessary to preserve liberty in our form of government, I think more and more that it depends on good citizens, discharging their daily duties in their daily obligations," Thomas said Saturday during a commencement address at Hillsdale College, a small liberal arts college in Michigan.

A pregnant Connecticut teen who tested positive for the Zika virus has decided to carry her baby to full term despite the risks of birth defects. "I'm not happy that my baby is going to be born with Zika but God has given me a miracle," Sara Mujica tells PEOPLE. The 17-year-old from Danbury, Connecticut, says that doctors told her she would never be able to conceive because she had meningitis at age 15. "Doctors said that I would never get pregnant so this is a big miracle for me," she says. Mujica and her fiancé, Victor Cruz, 19, learned...

Demonstrating the broad appeal of his in-depth immigration plan released Sunday, Trump’s proposal has won the accolades of one of the nation’s leading experts on the H-1B visas program. The H-1B is a visa designed to provided corporations with cheaper and less experienced guest workers to fill technology jobs. Norm Matloff, a professor at UC Davis, has written extensively about H-1B visa abuses, and his work is widely cited in the H-1B reform community. Matloff, a self-described Democrat and “longtime admirer of Sen. Bernie Sanders, gave Donald Trump’s H-1B policy “an A+” and was pleased that the Republican frontrunner was...

ination to the Supreme Court made by President Barack Obama, the White House is surely gearing up for a strategic nomination and epic battle for the future of the highest court in the country. Obama needs to move forward quickly with a transformative nominee who stands a chance of success on Capitol Hill. Diane Humetewa, U.S. District Judge for the District of Arizona is perhaps the most likely person to advance through Senate confirmation during Obama's final year in office. Nominating her would transform the federal judiciary, bring Native Americans into the highest echelons of political society, and actually stand...

"...Some of the last fireworks of the night came when Cruz attacked Trump's supposedly "very, very liberal" policies."Flexibility is a good thing, but you shouldn't be flexible on core principles," Cruz said. "I like Donald. He is an amazing entertainer. But his policies for most of his life..have been very, very liberal."Cruz continued:For most of his life, he has described himself as very pro-choice and as a supporter of partial-birth abortion. Right now today as a candidate, he supports federal taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood. I disagree with him on that."You are the single biggest liar," Trump shot back. "You...

There's been a lot of talk about whether Cruz is considered an natural born citizen, and therefore, eligible or not to run for President. There are different interpretations and I've been contemplating this issue and I want to throw this out for discussion: If two American citizens are living in, say, Germany when their child is born; does that automatically make the child a German citizen? Or are they American citizens because their parents are? Hmm... Yet, in America, when a child of two non-citizens is born in the USofA, the child is automatically considered a citizen. So, do we...

I first met Sen. Marco Rubio at a Republican fundraiser in 2014 where he was the featured speaker."Hi, my name is Mark Thies", I said. "I'm an Engineering Professor at Clemson.""Engineers!", he said. "Boy, we sure need a lot more of them, don't we!"I shook my head in wonder at his comment. Indeed, if you get your news from the mainstream media you might think there's a big shortage of students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The truth, however, is quite different. For example, Clemson's engineering enrollment has reached almost 5,300 students - an 80 percent increase since 2008! In my...