Free Republic

Ronnie Osburn was preparing to talk to National Review Online Thursday about lawlessness in his border community when his home was broken into.

The crisis is sparking heated debate in Washington, where critics claim the Obama administration’s immigration policies are to blame, including the DREAM Act, which defers deportation for some children. Nearby residents who oppose the Escondido center said they’re concerned it will hurt property values, increase crime and cause other problems. But some also decried the idea of federal tax dollars being used for such purposes, especially in their city. “We want our City Council and the Planning Commission to push back to the federal government and adhere to the laws,” said Kitty Demry, who lives about a one-third of a...

Mac Slavo June 23rd, 2014The White House would have us believe that the massive flood of immigrants on our southern border was a surprise that no one could have predicted. But a government contract posted in January of 2014 by the Department of Homeland Security tells a shockingly different story. According to the FedBizOpps.gov web site the government was seeking personnel who could provide escort services for “Unaccompanied Alien Children” in anticipation of an event that would leave up to 65,000 minors on our southern border without their parents or guardians. ICE is seeking the services of a responsible vendor...

Volunteer researchers have uncovered mass graves in a South Texas cemetery that they believe contain the bodies of immigrants who died crossing into the U.S. illegally, according to published reports Saturday. The discovery at Sacred Heart Burial Park in Falfurrias came in the last two weeks, as Baylor University anthropologist Lori Baker and Krista Latham, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Indianapolis, and their students worked as part of a multi-year effort to identify immigrants who've died in the area near the U.S.-Mexico border. Teams unearthed remains in trash bags, shopping bags, body bags or without a container at...

The surge of illegal immigrants surging across the border and overwhelming detention centers has been called a “humanitarian crisis” and ascribed to increased violence in Latin America. But a new poll of those immigrants shows that Obama’s promise of amnesty needs to assume much more of the blame: The main reason the subjects chose this particular time to migrate to the United States was to take advantage of the “new” U.S. “law” that grants a “free pass” or permit (referred to as “permisos”) being issued by the U.S. government to female adult OTMs traveling with minors and to UACs. (Comments:...

APOPKA, Fla. — Officials at Apopka’s Hope Community Center said they’ve received an influx of children who have entered the country illegally. More than 40 children have arrived so far and Sister Ann Kendrick said she expects more in the coming weeks. President Obama’s administration called the recent flood of nearly 50,000 unaccompanied children crossing the southern United States border a humanitarian crisis. Kendrick agrees. “People are desperate,” she said. “The majority are 12, 13 years old.” Most of the children came from countries in Central America, where poverty and violence are rampant.

Opinion: Immigrants are productive and make us a richer nation With House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s primary loss to tea party candidate David Brat, federal immigration reform looks dead. But the Tea Party should favor sensible immigration reform with border controls. It would result in additional economic growth, allowing the government to cut spending and lower taxes — key tea-party demands. Immigrants increase gross domestic product growth. Immigration expands the American workforce and encourages more business startups. In 2013 the labor-force participation of foreign-born workers was higher than native-born workers (66.4% vs. 62.7%). Their unemployment rate was lower (6.9%, compared...

Hailing from all corners of the US, thousands of immigrants and human rights activists are traveling today to the nation's capital for a rally on Wed. in support for immigration reform......(April 2013). The way it looks is that the boarder crossings are being flooded with children of several central American countries who cannot control their poverty and violence problems. The US government seems to think that flooding boarder states with this massive influx will force an immigration deal...but I wonder how Wash DC would handle such an influx. Why not a repeat of earlier bus caravans and drop these thousands...

The Obama administration announced it is designating a third U.S. military base for emergency housing of children immigrating illegally into the United States without parents or relatives. The news came as officials insist that the children are in good hands, despite allegations of abuse by US authorities. Senior administration officials, who asked not to be identified, told reporters that an Army base at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, will initially hold 600 ‘unaccompanied minors’ and eventually will be able to accommodate up to 1,200.

THOMPSON SPRINGS, Grand County — Four people were killed and four others critically injured after a van that was apparently involved in a human smuggling operation rolled multiple times on I-70 Friday morning. About 4:30 a.m., approximately 34 miles west of the Utah-Colorado border ... Investigators believe a ninth person, possibly a woman, walked away from the scene. That person had not been located as of noon. "We're looking at this as possibly being a human smuggling case," Royce said. The Utah State Bureau of Investigations, Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were assisting the Utah...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said he would strive to be like Lyndon Johnson, the Democrat famous for expanding the U.S. welfare state through the "Great Society," if he were elected president. According to the Miami Herald, Bush made those comments Wednesday night in San Antonio, Florida at Saint Leo University, while speaking about education, immigration, and energy policy. Bush did not address Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty programs, about which Ronald Reagan once famously quipped, "We had a war on poverty, and poverty won."

Immigration officials knowingly released dozens of murderers back into the U.S. in 2013, according to Obama administration statistics detailing all of the criminal convictions of the more than 36,000 immigrants released from custody last year. The numbers show that the criminals released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had amassed more than 15,000 drunken-driving convictions, 1,317 domestic violence convictions, 727 sex crimes convictions and even four that the statistics listed as “treason, sabotage.” The immigrants were in deportation proceedings, meaning ICE was trying to remove them from the country and could have held them in detention, but released them anyway,

On Thursday, President Barack Obama's administration issued new guidance to schools, emphasizing that they cannot discourage illegal immigrant students from enrolling by requiring proof of legal status. As Politico reported, the Obama administration noted that schools "can violate federal law by requiring Social Security numbers or birth certificates when a student wants to enroll," but they can be compliant if they "instead ask for proof of residency in a school district, which a family can do with an electric bill or copy of a lease." In a "Dear Colleague Letter," the Obama administration stated that under federal law, school districts...

The Obama administration moved Tuesday to allow spouses of foreign workers to take jobs in the United States as part of a slate of new draft immigration regulations. A pair of rules proposed by the Department of Homeland Security also would make it easier for highly skilled workers from certain countries to remain in the U.S. Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the actions would be a boon to American companies who rely on foreign workers, and would serve as a magnet for additional investment in U.S. firms. “These steps will help the U.S. maintain competitiveness with other countries...

It was the Inconvenient Truth of its day. The book was The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich, published in 1968. Ehrlich made some apocalyptic predictions about resource depletion and mass starvation resulting from population growth. A frightened public devoured the book. But Ehrlich got some things wrong. He didn’t factor into his thinking technological change and the growth of free enterprise around the world, both of which have done much to ameliorate global poverty and hunger. The biggest thing he got wrong, though, was that he failed to foresee this: The population is now shrinking in many parts of...

The recent news that doctors trained outside the EU perform remarkably worse than others on key exams and performance reviews has created fears and lack of trust in doctors. This is the result of a study commissioned by the General Medical Council and carried out by the University College London and University of Cambridge, published in the British Medical Journal - the most rigorous study to date – , and a research by Durham University also published in the BMJ. Non-EU-trained doctors make up a quarter of the NHS medical workforce. We’ve repeatedly – in fact, whenever there is...

Aslam Khawaja, 48, of Iranistan Avenue, the owner of the SK Grocery at 856 Fairfield Ave., was charged Wednesday with first-degree larceny by defrauding a public community, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. From March through December 2013 Khawaja paid cash to 128 of his customers who are on the state's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for their SNAP benefits at 50 cents to a dollar of benefit, the arrest affidavit states. ... Khawaja is a Pakistani national. In December he was shot during a robbery at his store and at that time asked detectives to file...

**SNIP** They were found in an undeveloped patch of scrub near an abandoned tennis club in McAllen. They were camped under tents and huts camouflaged with mesquite branches and cacti. Some told authorities they had been there sleeping on pieces of cardboard with little food or water for at least a week. It was unclear whether any of those arrested Thursday afternoon were guides suspected of guarding the immigrants, Border Patrol spokesman Danny Tirado told The McAllen Monitor. A short time later, Border Patrol arrested 132 immigrants found in two buildings on a property in Alton, about 8 miles west...

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus is done being patient. There was a time when an Oval Office meeting with President Obama could buy their silence. But no longer. On Friday April 4, the CHC sent a six-page letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson demanding that Obama use "all legal means available" to "suspend, delay, or dispense with the deportations of immigrants who would qualify for legal status and protection under S. 744." At no point does the letter bother to call for new legislation or the passage of S.744. Instead, the CHC just demands that Obama enforce current...

If President Obama means what he says about wanting an immigration system that reflects American values, helps the economy and taps the yearnings of millions of Americans-in-waiting, he is going to have to do something about it — soon and on his own. It has been frustrating to watch his yes-we-can promises on immigration reform fade to protestations of impotence and the blaming of others. All Mr. Obama has been saying lately is: No, in fact, we can’t, because Republicans and the law won’t let me. Mr. Obama is correct when he complains that long-term immigration repairs have been throttled...