Free Republic

There is no reason to believe that 81 percent of new jobs were filled by immigrants in Texas.The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) has released a detailed rejoinder to a well-publicized study by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) that made a remarkable claim: “Of jobs created in Texas since 2007, 81 percent were taken by newly arrived immigrant workers (legal and illegal).” Put simply, CIS used faulty methodology to make its main point. It compared a net increase in jobs in Texas over a four-year period with a gross increase in employed newly arrived immigrants in Texas. This is...

The 10-year surge in illegal and legal immigration has exploded the populations of mostly Democratic states enough that the 2020 census is likely to result in the redistribution of 24 House seats in states President Trump won, according to a new population analysis released Thursday morning. The prediction from the Center for Immigration Studies said that 26 seats overall will shift due to immigration increases since the last census was taken. And it said that a minimum of 19 of those seats will be added to Democratic states.

During his twelve-year reign as FBI Director, Robert Mueller not only protected his criminal friends by silencing those who could expose their bad acts, he projected his friends’ crimes onto others in order to fraudulently appoint a Special Counsel. And the FISA court judge Reggie Walton — who was hacked by Obama officials John Brennan and James Clapper, according to whistleblower evidence — has been involved in more than one of these plots. There is no better Deep State tool for punishing your enemies than a fraudulent Special Counsel (who is not accountable to anyone) with an unlimited budget and...

Are we going to have immigration limits or not? That's the question underlying the calls for the abolition of Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE), the bureau within the Department of Homeland Security responsible for upholding our immigration rules away from the borders. The push to #AbolishICE is threatening to become a litmus test for Democratic politicians. It has been embraced by presidential hopefuls like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), as well as other far-left figures such as New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, actress-turned-New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon, and a number of House members. Despite...

Donald Trump’s speech yesterday on the threat of radical Islam included a section about immigration policy that has the usual suspects in a tizzy. This section focused not on terrorism, but rather on what Andy McCarthy calls the “grand jihad,” the importation of Islamist ideology that rejects our constitutional order and open society. In his trademark manner, Trump departed from the prepared text to Archie Bunker-ize the speech by calling this “extreme vetting,” which is not the phraseology you should use once you’ve won the nomination and are trying to persuade the middle-of-the-road voter in Ohio and Florida. But rather...

That recent poll that showed wide opposition to Obama’s lawless amnesty decrees and support for defunding efforts also asked a third question: “Would you support or oppose Congress passing new legislation that strengthen the rules making it illegal for businesses in the U.S. to hire illegal immigrants?” Support for this was overwhelming, 71–21, far greater than the other questions (strongly support/oppose was 45 percent to 9 percent). (SNIP) So why did the House leadership try to fast-track a border bill (which has been at least temporarily derailed because immigration hawks objected to its phoniness) instead of passing an E-Verify mandate?...

Mark Krikorian and Frank Sharry talked about the prospects for immigration reform in the Republican-led 114th Congress, which would convene January 6, 2015, and the effect of President Obama’s executive action on the issue.

As President Obama pursues executive action to reshape America’s immigration system, Hudson Institute will host a symposium of competing views on immigration reform and its compatibility with America’s founding principles, a free market economy, and the evolving needs of modern America.

Alex Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute and Philip Wolgin at the Center for American Progress (CAP) each comment on, but don't really try to refute, a new report that I co-authored on the lack of a shortage of STEM workers. The American Immigration Lawyers Association's Paul McDaniel also comments on the report at the association's American Immigration Council website. Like Nowrasteh and Wolgin, McDaniel doesn't really try to refute the report. He cites Cato and CAP and also repeat a number of the points from our report. Let me address Cato's blog first because both Wolgin and McDaniel partly rely...

For years people such as Mark Krikorian, Senator Jeff Sessions, and the editors at National Review have argued that Republicans need to do more to reach out to working-class Americans. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) recently issued a new candidates’ pledge that advances that goal. The pledge binds candidates to oppose any legislation that would grant more work permits or expand the already large number of new immigrants and temporary workers into the U.S. In Georgia, all four top-tier GOP Senate candidates (Representative Paul Broun, Karen Handel, Representative Jack Kingston, and David Perdue) have signed the FAIR pledge.

You’d think that someone who put his name on a book about immigration would at least know a little bit about it. I’m afraid that may not be the case, if Jeb Bush’s recent comments on illegal immigration are any indication. His “act of love” comment is what’s gotten everyone’s attention, and I agree with Ramesh’s take on the Corner to the extent that there’s some truth to what Jeb said:

Matt Bevin, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s primary challenger, told a group of Kentucky voters that American workers are less productive than immigrants. “For those who think that all these fifteen to twenty million [illegal immigrant] people are here just to take advantage of us and ride the system, you’re wrong,” he said at a diner in Jessamine, Kentucky, in March. “Most of them are not… but I’ll tell you what, there are more people like that even proportionally that were born here in this country,” he added.

In 2008, Mark Krikorian published an important new book arguing against permissive immigration. The book's central idea: what has changed since Ellis Island days is not the immigrants; it's the society they are immigrating to. In 1913, a Sicilian who migrated to New York City to do manual labor would discover a society willing to pay a high wage for his effort. In 2013 … not so. Yesterday's New York Times reports on a new study confirming Krikorian's insight. People of Mexican descent in New York City are far more likely to be living in poor or near-poor households than...

Rand Paul’s amnesty speech before the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce was a pastiche of establishment cliches. Permit me to select some and respond: Growing up in Texas I never met a Latino who wasn’t working. While this kind of flattery is expected when politicians pander to any kind of group, in this case it’s not true. The latest data show that 65.4 percent of U.S.-born Hispanics over age 16 have a job, and 68.4 percent of Hispanic immigrants (legal and illegal) do, compared with 69.3 percent for the country as a whole. That’s not a difference worth getting...

Since I knew His Majesty wouldn't say much of anything about immigration, and I can no longer stand the sound of his voice, I just went to bed. But he said even less than I expected: We should continue to work at fixing our broken immigration system to secure our borders and enforce our laws and ensure that everyone who plays by rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation. That's it? I was figuring at least three sentences, or maybe two. As Roy Beck put it:

Gov. Sarah Palin wowed Republicans with her convention speech. In addition to her life story, she expressed strong conservative views on lower taxes, national defense, and energy independence. But what does she think about immigration? She said nothing about it, no doubt at the behest of the McCain campaign. And there doesn't seem to be anything on the record revealing her views — not on border security, not on legal immigration, nothing. The Hill newspaper quotes an immigration expert in Alaska as saying "She's never made any statements. I don't recall really any positions that she's taken." Given Sen. John...

Whaddya Know? Enforcement Works! Real-life immigration lessons. By Mark Krikorian ‘They’re not going back unless they are rounded up” — Hillary Clinton, 2007 In this quote, Senator Clinton nicely summed up the conventional wisdom on immigration enforcement: the only options before us are either arresting and deporting every single illegal alien or legalizing them. George Will was more colorful with his image of “200,000 buses in a caravan stretching bumper-to-bumper from San Diego to Alaska” as the only way to reduce the illegal population. The Bush administration shared this view and for six and a half years pushed amnesty, which...

A McDonald's franchisee in Nevada pled guilty and agreed to may a $1 million fine for its knowing employment of illegal aliens (the two executives involved will be sentenced later). This is indeed "a coup for the government's crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants," as the Wall Street Journal put it, but the fact that it's McDonald's is especially important. McDonald's is believed to be the company with the largest number of no-matches — that is, W-2s filed by the employer that have fake or mismatched Social Security numbers. That's from a 2004 report by the Social Security Administration...

The TERRY ANDERSON SHOW.. Articulating the Popular Rage! Sundays - 12-1 AM EDT, 11-12 PM CDT, 10-11 PM MDT, 9-10 PM PDT KRLA - 870 AM - Los Angeles -- KDWN - 720 - Las Vegas -- KFNX - 1100 - Phoenix "If You Ain't Mad, You Ain't Payin' Attention!" Call-In Number - (866) 870-5752 Don't miss Terry's July 13th show with guest ... MARK KRIKORIAN - author of a new book on immigration, legal and illegal.. Can you guess WHO the most Horriblest Clown of the Week is? Listen to Terry online ... http://krla870.townhall.com/ http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/index.php?cmd=listenlive

On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to take up the appeal lodged by environmental groups that focused on a two-mile stretch of border fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The fence, which has been built since the petition was filed, is a vital part of the Bush administration’s drive to secure the border between the United States and Mexico. The Supreme Court’s decision is a welcome and needed victory in the war against illegal immigration and efforts to preserve the unique character that is America. The environmentalists based part of their challenge on claims...