Free Republic

Republican leaders, who seem curiously eager to facilitate this deal for the president, have bent over backwards to assure the many skeptical Republican members that neither Trade Promotion Authority (TPA, or "fast-track" authority) nor the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact, which would be the next trade agreement to be rushed through the approval process on an up or down vote without possibility of amendments, includes or allows changes to immigration or visa law. Some might be willing to trust our leaders on that, but in fact the biggest danger is not that the TPA bill and the TPP treaty make direct...

A U.S. Court of Appeals judge has ordered U.S. officials to intercept a mother and her 12-year-old daughter on a plane Friday being deported to Guatemala and immediately return them to the United States. The 34-year-old mother, Ana, and her daughter were woken up at 3 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Friday and pulled from their rooms at a Pennsylvania family detention center, where they had been living for over a year, said her attorney, Bridget Cambria. By 10 a.m., the two were placed on a plane flying to Panama City, where they would catch a second flight to Guatemala...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Scott in Philadelphia. Great to have you on Open Line Friday, sir. Hello. CALLER: It's an honor, Rush. I got a problem with all the... McConnell, Boehner, and Karl Rove. They've hijacked the party. RUSH: Yeah. (sigh) CALLER: I want to know why nobody says nothing about it. I mean, we elect these conservatives, they get in there, and then they're browbeaten into submission. RUSH: Well, it's not that nobody says anything about it. I myself have been referencing this. Others I know have. I mean, I know people who are making this the focal point of...

From immigration and the “Latino registration machine” to the GOP’s apparent inability to recognize the racial aspects of the Charleston church shooting, Real Time host Bill Maher had a field day with his panelists on Friday night’s show. Yet it’s the “Overtime” segment’s extra nuggets that made for some of the most WTF-worthy viewing, especially for this reaction from MSNBC’s Joy Reid: Of all the possible conversation topics, what could have triggered such a reaction from Reid? Oh nothing, really — just guest Ann Coulter‘s funny-but-serious answer to Maher’s question about “which Republican candidate has the best chance of winning...

The fatal shootings this week at a historic black church in South Carolina has sparked a feud between the presidential campaigns of Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. Clinton suggested Thursday that Trump’s comments about Mexicans, during his campaign announcement speech three days earlier, could incite racial hatred like that which led to white male Dylann Roof on Wednesday evening allegedly killing nine black people attending a bible study inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, S.C. “The people who do this kind of dastardly, horrible act are a very small percentage,” Clinton said in Nevada on...

An undocumented immigrant who was cleared by a Brooklyn appellate court to practice law in New York has run into a potential obstacle to joining the bar after an Iowa state judge sentenced him to one year of probation for trespassing during a political rally held on private property. Cesar Vargas, 31, participated in a demonstration over immigration policies at a rally for Republican presidential candidates and others in Des Moines. He and other demonstrators sat among about 1,500 attendees on the private property. At one point, he rose and disrupted a speech by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, asking...

Goodbye to the prosperous country founded by overwhelmingly Protestant colonists in the 18th century. Hello to the third-world multicultural mélange with a distinctly Mexican accent, appalling cultural norms, and a clearly leftist political orientation. Such is the vision of the United States given by no-holds-barred pundit Ann Coulter in her latest book, Adios, America: The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole. Coulter’s subtitle summarizes her basic thesis -- that America’s immigration policies since the decisive Edward Kennedy immigration bill in 1965 have altered our demographic makeup so radically that the nation will be unalterably degraded...

Denmark's opposition parties have beaten the ruling coalition after a close general election. With all mainland votes counted, the centre-right group led by ex-PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen beat PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt's centre-left coalition, although her party is the largest. Ms Thorning-Schmidt has now stood down as Social Democratic Party leader. The right-wing, anti-immigration Danish People's Party will become the second-largest in parliament. In a victory speech just before 01:30 local time (23:30 GMT), Mr Rasmussen - who led the country between 2009 and 2011 - said: "Four years ago, we returned the keys to the PM's office. I said that...

University graduates routinely show great emotion (spontaneous and sometimes scripted) as they stand in front of crowds to mark momentous occasions. Onlookers clap and cheer, hoot and holler, and then wait to see what the next student (or student body) will do. But one UC San Diego student's Mexican flag-waving exuberance has sparked a conversation that's transcended her brief moment Sunday. Indira Esparza, a 22-year-old undocumented student who moved to the U.S. when she was 2, proudly unfurled the green, white and red flag of Mexico as she walked across the stage.

Saying it was time to “face hard truths about race, violence, guns and division,” Hillary Rodham Clinton called for action Thursday in response to the shooting that killed nine worshipers at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C. [Snip] “How many innocent people in our country, from little children to church members to movie theater attendees, how many people do we need to see cut down before we act?” she asked. She did not, however, offer any specific plan for reducing gun violence. [Snip] She [also] denounced anti-immigrant rhetoric, which she called "divisive," and mused about the nature of hatred...

The US Department of State, DHS, and 14 Democrat Senators, including Senator Kaine (see his press release), are begging for 65,000 Syrian refugees to be settled in our communities and without your consent. Virginia only has 17 Syrian refugees at last count, so is Virginia under review for the next huge wave? As thousands of new immigrants are slated to arrive over the next few years, the chances of rubbing shoulders with Islamic terrorists increase dramatically. According to Refugee Resettlement Watch, the percentage of Muslim refugees in America was close to zero in the 1990’s. By the year 2000 it was 44%. Post...

Senator Ted Cruz has introduced the "Immigration Slush Fund Elimination Act" to prohibit the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from using the fees it collects for the provision of legal immigration services to fund amnesty. The bill would also restore congressional authority over the appropriations process and refocus the department on its national security mission. “America has always been a land of refuge and opportunity for those seeking freedom, and we should champion legal immigration,” said Sen. Cruz. “Ronald Reagan referred to legal immigrants, immigrants like my father, as Americans by choice. The federal government should not be in the...

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — In a move that adds momentum to efforts to integrate immigrants, California is on the cusp of becoming the largest state in the nation to extend state-subsidized health care coverage to children from low-income families who are in the country illegally.Democrats, immigration groups and health care advocates celebrated the announcement as both a cost-saving move and social progress for the state’s estimated 2.5 million immigrants who are in the country illegally. Critics, however, worry that the overburdened state-funded health program can’t handle another 170,000 children.Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders announced a $115.4 billion budget...

Corporate lobbyists have convinced legislators of both parties that America needs more guest workers in high-tech jobs. Leading the charge in Congress to do their bidding is Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, who has introduced legislation to double or triple the number of non-immigrant tech workers who can be hired annually on H-1B visas. But his proposal won't fix the H-1B program's flaws, which allow American and foreign workers alike to be exploited and underpaid. A program that brings skilled, smart people from abroad to work in the United States can be a very good thing — but only if it's...

President Obama took office vowing to go after unscrupulous employers who hire illegal immigrants, but worksite audits have plunged over the last year and a half, according to a report released Tuesday by the Center for Immigration Studies, tumbling along with the rest of immigration enforcement. Fewer owners are being arrested, and fewer fines are being collected as well, according to the report, which suggests that even as he offers amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, Mr. Obama is giving a similar free pass to ever more businesses who provide the jobs magnet that draws them. Through the first five...

For hundreds of college students in Ireland, flocking to California for the summer has become a rite of passage. They arrive in Berkeley each year not to fill University of California lecture halls, but to work on temporary J-1 visas, the federal Work Travel Program that allows foreign students to live and work in the U.S. for up to four months...About 8,000 Irish students applied for the J-1 visa in 2014...

Immigrants are known for bringing a strong work ethic and economic stimuli to the U.S., but as their families settle into American life, too many are earning too little. According to the latest US Census data on means-tested government assistance, the two largest demographic groups that include large numbers of recent immigrants or children of immigrants (Asians and Hispanics) are disproportionately poor enough to qualify for public assistance.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)He wasn’t supposed to say it, but he couldn’t help himself. John Ellis Bush, former Governor of Florida let’er rip. He said exactly what a careful review of the transcript reveals he was supposed to avoid during his announcement for president speech at Miami Dade College. It appeared that Jeb Bush, or just “Jeb” as the signs and placards read to distinguish him from the field and other Bushes before him, was not going to mention comprehensive immigration reform. Not here, not in this speech. This speech was intended to show him for what he is, a devoted father, son...

President Obama took office vowing to go after unscrupulous employers who hire illegal immigrants, but worksite audits have plunged over the last year and a half, according to a report released Tuesday by the Center for Immigration Studies, tumbling along with the rest of immigration enforcement. Fewer owners are being arrested, and fewer fines are being collected as well, according to the report, which suggests that even as he offers amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, Mr. Obama is giving a similar free pass to ever more businesses who provide the jobs magnet that draws them. Through the first five...

[1]Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.Most bad policies are bipartisan. Democrats come up with them and Republicans sheepishly implement them. Amnesty is one of the few bad policies that Republicans desperately try to claim as their own.Amnesty is a sinkhole of corrupt interests, from businesses looking for cheap labor to Democrats looking for cheap votes, and panic by fossilized political entities like the NAACP, unions and the Republican Party; eager to surrender out of fear that they will be be left behind by the demographic future.Those...