Free Republic

Silicon Valley was energized by legal immigrants from all over the world who founded eBay, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Stripe, Sun Microsystems, Tesla, Yahoo and a host of others. The Greek-American Elia Kazan’s 1963 film “America America” is based on the Herculean struggle of the director’s uncle to immigrate to the United States. It summed up Americans’ traditional view of immigrants: They had risked everything for the chance to reach America, and once there, became hyperpatriotic in their gratitude for the magnanimity of their new hosts. I grew up in rural California surrounded by hard-working immigrant farm families from Armenia, India,...

As the Trump administration works on deporting the millions of illegal immigrants that the Biden administration let in through the southern border, Democrats and the left have insisted that America is "a nation of immigrants." It's just another attempt to twist words and meanings to fit their ideology. Traditionally, immigrants expected to come to the U.S. and work hard to achieve success. As if we didn't already suspect, today's immigrants appear to have a very different idea of what coming to America is.Center for Immigration Studies Director Jessica Vaughan on the burden of illegal aliens on taxpayers:“Over 60% of illegal...

The contrast between the grateful immigrants who once embraced America and the resentful newcomers who scorn it reveals how radically—and dangerously—the nation’s immigration ethos has changed. The Traditional ImmigrantSilicon Valley was energized by legal immigrants from all over the world who founded eBay, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Stripe, Sun Microsystems, Tesla, Yahoo, and a host of others. The Greek American Elia Kazan’s 1963 film America, America is a fictional account based on the Herculean struggle of the director’s uncle to immigrate to the United States from an impoverished and hostile Turkish Anatolia. The film summed up Americans’ traditional view of immigrants:...

The Department of Homeland Security said Friday in a social media post that eight percent of the total population of Nicaragua illegally came into the United States under the Biden administration, which siphoned resources from the U.S. The department said a large percentage of Cuban, Haitian and Honduran nationals are also in the United States illegally, consisting of 7% of Cuba's total population, 6% of Haiti's, and 5% of Honduras,' according to Fox News. "Illegal immigration is siphoning American resources," the department posted on X. "Due to unchecked migration during the Biden era, 8% of the ENTIRE population of Nicaragua...

Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said it was “not realistic” to remove over 25 million people in this country who are undocumented.’#Lawler said, “Look, this is an issue that I’ve been focused on for years. You know, for 40 years, we have not solved our immigration crisis. The American people were rightly outraged by what happened under the Biden administration, where you had over 10.5 million migrants cross our border, most of them illegally. You know, porous Southern border needed to be shut down. President Trump did that. The fact is, we have had nine straight...

In one sense, Saddam Azlan Salim is a classic immigrant success story. Born in Bangladesh, he grew up in northern Virginia and quickly demonstrated an aptitude for the political rough-and-tumble of his adoptive land. Now he is 36 years old, a Virginia state senator, and a rising star in that state’s now-dominant Democrat Party establishment. In another sense, however, Saddam Azlan Salim clearly retains at least some of the sensibilities of the land of his birth, and he wants to bring them to his new land: He has just introduced a bill to criminalize “Islamophobia” in Virginia. In Bangladesh, criticizing...

Rural Texas residents claim that a Muslim city is being built in their backyard and accuse local officials of being very secretive about the deal. Kaufman, Texas, residents didn’t think much of it when Kaufman Solar LLC bought a massive parcel of land in 2022. However, now that a mysterious buyer from the Middle East is looking to purchase an estimated 2,000 acres of land right next door to the planned solar farm to establish a sustainable city, they are worried about the impact. Residents first became aware of the potential new settlement through a Facebook post from a concerned...

Up to 1,000 people have gone missing at sea and are feared dead after a huge storm ripped through the Mediterranean last month. The migrant-rescue non-governmental organisation (NGO) Mediterranea Saving Humans estimated the number based on testimonies from refugees in Libya and Tunisia. Huge waves and gale-force winds caused by Storm Harry battered the coast of southern Italy, parts of Spain and the island of Malta, two weeks ago. Now the NGO's president Laura Marmorale has described it as 'one of the biggest tragedies in recent years on the central Mediterranean route'. She accused the governments of Italy and Malta...

Former Minnesota Vikings captain and University of Minnesota football player Jack Brewer spoke out against the anti-ICE agitators in his state. Unrest erupted in and around Minneapolis on Saturday after a Border Patrol agent fatally shot one of the agitators. Brewer called out the state's liberal leadership for inciting the unrest, arguing the Democrats are opposed to ICE because the agency is "deporting their voters." "We’re deporting their voters. That’s part of what’s happening and it’s blowing up their whole plan," Brewer told Fox News Digital. "You can’t allow people to come into your country who don’t carry the same...

Donald Trump has ordered ICE agents to begin rounding up Somali migrants in Maine as part of the administration's latest immigration crackdown. Federal agents are sweeping through the state's two largest cities, Portland and Lewiston, as the Department of Homeland Security announced 'Operation Catch of the Day' on Wednesday. Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin announced that agents had arrested multiple individuals on the first day of the operation. Local officials in Maine's two biggest cities are warning residents that ICE will begin ramping up its enforcement operations in the next few days. Meanwhile, the US attorney’s office in Maine warned...

Just five days before the election of 2008, which would catapult him into the presidency, candidate Barack Obama gave a speech in which he made what is now one of his infamous statements: “We are just five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” In typical fashion, the press was too busy making goo-goo eyes at Obama to parse out what he meant by that statement, much less ask why a “fundamental transformation” of America would be necessary or desirable. Bestselling author and commentator Mark Levin asked what is perhaps the most salient question when he said,...

Consider the claim that the United States imported not just tens of thousands of Somali pirates and fraudsters, but hundreds of deadly killers as refugees. This notion demands careful unpacking, for it touches on matters of immigration policy, national security, and moral accountability. One might wonder how such a large-scale influx could occur without proper vetting, much like the hasty resettlement of Afghan refugees after the 2021 withdrawal. The answer lies in a pattern of lax procedures that prioritized volume over scrutiny, leading to unforeseen consequences in communities like those in Minnesota. Neither the residents of Minneapolis nor the...

The Trump administration is ending Temporary Protected Status for Somalians in the United States. TPS allows individuals from a country where war or other forms of unrest are taking place to remain in the United States when they would not be eligible to be admitted through other immigration programs. The Department of Homeland Security said TPS for the group ends March 17. “Temporary means temporary,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said, according to Fox News. “Country conditions in Somalia have improved to the point that it no longer meets the law’s requirement for Temporary Protected Status.” Fox noted that Somalis have...

The U.S. government is revoking the legal status of several thousand immigrants from Somalia, raising the specter of deportation for a community often assailed by President Trump. A Department of Homeland Security official said the Trump administration had decided to terminate Somalia's Temporary Protected Status program, which allows beneficiaries to live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation. Nationals of Somalia enrolled in the TPS program are now set to lose their legal status and work permits on March 17. The DHS official said roughly 2,500 Somali immigrants with TPS are expected to be affected by the termination....

The Trump administration is ending temporary protected status for immigrants from Somalia, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed in a post on X. "Somali nationals with TPS are now required to leave the United States by March 17, 2026," a post from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said. Temporary protected status is provided to immigrants from some countries facing safety conditions, such as environmental disasters and armed conflict. Other countries currently covered include Lebanon, El Salvador and Yemen.

Did Obama really deport more people than Trump? On the surface, the answer is yes. During his two terms in office from 2009 to 2017, Barack Obama’s administration oversaw roughly 2.7–3.2 million deportations (removals and returns), making him, by some measures, the president with the highest total deportations in modern US history. Since Obama’s era included a higher share of border returns counted as deportations, his total figures appear higher even though the populations targeted were different. Under Trump, enforcement has increasingly focused on interior arrests and removals but these often lag in official numbers due to legal backlogs and...

President Donald Trump shared a chart on social media this week showing welfare usage rates among immigrant households in the United States. The chart, titled “Immigrant Welfare Recipient Rates by Country of Origin,” lists the percentage of immigrant households receiving public assistance, broken down by country or region of birth. According to the data shown, approximately 72 percent of Somali-born households in the US receive some form of government welfare, placing Somalia among the highest-listed countries on the chart. Other groups shown with high welfare participation rates include households from Bhutan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, and several African, Middle Eastern, and...

Although it's undeniably true that Minnesota has a large and proud Somalian community, there are some who have suggested that community is operating in Minnesota in a sinister way. One particular bugaboo for Conservative critics of the Somali community in Minnesota, and the state's embrace of those immigrants, has to do with the changing of the Minnesota state flag. The state adopted a new state flag in 2024, and some think that state flag resembles the state flag of Somalia. Now, many want to know whether that's actually the case. Here's what we know. The new Minnesota flag vs. the...

Almost half a billion pounds of taxpayers' money should be used to make Channel migrants more comfortable in France before they try to cross to Britain, the Green Party's new leader will say tomorrow. Zack Polanski will use his provocative Christmas Day message to say £476 million currently being spent on 'cruelty' trying to stop them should to go towards a new system based on 'compassion, kindness and humanity'. In a video whose release is timed to clash with the King's Speech he will talk about a three-day visit to Calais he made in the run-up to the festive period....

The Essex town of Epping which saw major protests after a local girl was sexually assaulted by a newly-arrived boat illegal won’t have a permanent migrant plantation forced on it, as the government backs down from buying up local properties for its guests. Protesters gained a minor victory against the British government, forcing the Home Office and Shabana Mahmood to abandon plans to end the ongoing scandal of housing vast numbers of boat migrant arrivals in publicly-funded hotels by instead buying up local homes and apartments for them to live in instead. Having called the plan “tone-deaf”, the local community...