Free Republic

Obama administration officials met in Los Angeles on Friday with Mayor Eric Garcetti, local nonprofits and business owners to discuss ways to encourage immigrants to become U.S. citizens. "To launch forward we must return to our core values as Americans and even in these tough times strive to embrace our role as a nation of immigrants, a nation of dreamers, a nation of hope," Garcetti said on Twitter about the meeting, which was closed to the public. The 4 1/2-hour meeting in City Hall was part of a multi-city tour by the White House's Task Force on New Americans, which...

Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson told Arizonans that if elected president, he would seal the entire U.S.-Mexico border with a double-fenced wall within a year of taking office. His statement came in response to a question asked during a live half-hour telephone town hall meeting: "How practically and quickly can we get a wall that's effective?" one man asked, adding with great emphasis that "time is not on our side." Carson paused for moment, as if considering the logistics of constructing a 2,000-mile wall, before answering: "I think it can be done in a less than a year," he replied...

An Obama program within the Department of Homeland Security is tasked with turning foreigners into citizens as quickly as possible. The Obama administration’s efforts to transform the nation’s electorate through immigration is running at full speed. White House employees have been sent to the Department of Homeland Security to accelerate President Obama’s efforts to integrate foreigners into the American political landscape as quickly as possible — preferably by November 2016. Meet Mariestella Fischer Vélez. Velez has joined the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service. Velez is on a detailfrom the White House for 120 days to steer...

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker acknowledged in a CNN interview that in the past he had expressed support for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, but said that he wasn't talking about amnesty at the time. In an interview aboard his campaign trailer that aired Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," Dana Bash pressed Walker about his shift from somebody who once said a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants "made sense" to a presidential candidate talking about restrictions on legal immigration. She asked whether such shifts undermined his pitch to voters that he's somebody who stands up for...

Many moons ago, all the way back in 2013, The Wasau Daily Herald published an article. That article contained an interview with the Wisconsin Governor. Among the many topics discussed was federal immigration reform. “People want to come here and work hard and benefit, I don’t care whether they come from Mexico or Ireland or Germany or Canada or South Africa or anywhere else, I want them here.” Walker told the Wasau Daily Herald editors. At a time when the loudest voices on the right were screaming for border security while ignoring the major issues with our current immigration infrastructure,...

Daniel and Samuel were both born in Monterrey, Mexico on the same day in 1990 and baptized by the same priest two Sundays later. Both attended the same primary and secondary schools. Both dreamed of some day moving to the United States. But there the similarity ends. Samuel dropped out of school in tenth grade. Daniel graduated from secondary school, went on to the university and graduated at the top of his class. The last time Samuel ever walked through the door of a church is when he walked out of one just after receiving the sacrament of confirmation. Daniel...

If we are to believe candidate Marco Rubio’s comments during an Oct. 24, 2010 debate, it seems the Florida senator’s views on immigration reform have ‘evolved’ quite a bit since taking office. During a debate with opponents Rep. Kendrick Meek and Gov. Charlie Crist, candidate Rubio argued that giving illegal immigrants an “earned path to citizenship,” which Crist, Sen. John McCain and former President George W. Bush had advocated, is basically amnesty. "First of all, earned path to citizenship is basically code for amnesty. It's what they call it," Rubio said. "And the reality of it is this: This has...

As I listen to the prominent voices championing Comprehensive Immigration Reform, whether they be among the politicos or the opinion makers, there is a universal theme. The theme is that we owe a path to citizenship to 12 million migrants who violated our immigration laws. It's as if amnesty is not a matter of generosity, but instead an entitlement. The illegals deserve legal status because they went to the trouble of slipping across our border and succeeded in eluding our law enforcement system. As one example of this, the Wall Street Journal reports that Richard Trumka, head of the labor...

Americans might generally think that if someone forges a document and uses a Social Security number that does not belong to them, they should go to jail. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., believes if you are an illegal alien and you do these things, you should become a U.S. citizen. He made his case for this in the Senate Judiciary Committee. When the committee was considering amendments to its immigration "reform" bill on May 20, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, pointed to a report published by The Associated Press in March. This report told the story of Candida L. Gutierrez, a Houston...

Politico is discussing the prospects of Barack Obama's remaining agenda in light of the trifecta of scandals exploding around him. While the authors of the piece, Jake Sherman, Ginger Gibson and Seung Min Kim speculate that various of the items on the President's 'to-do list' are to one degree or another, in jeapordy - they seem to see a Silver lining for 'Immigration Reform amidst all the general gloom. But the scandal trifecta — including Benghazi, the IRS probe of conservative groups and the Justice Department’s seizure of reporters’ records — presents a new challenge for the House GOP: how...

With the incoming Congress looking for accomplishments, here's one the Republican majority should take up immediately: immigration reform. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Republicans are its natural champions. The GOP led the way in 1986 and 1996, when partial immigration reforms were enacted. And a Republican Senate, with the support of President George W. Bush, passed comprehensive reform in 2006, only to see it die in the House. . . . The best approach is a gradual and targeted legalization program that serves our economic needs. For skilled workers, employers should be in the driver's seat to identify who is most...

America does not have a legal-immigration problem. America does have a problem with illegals, and Obama's amnesty, or "path to citizenship," would undermine the rule of law and make it harder for jobless Americans to compete with up to an estimated 20 million newly legalized illegal aliens. It also is consistent for the GOP to oppose Mr. Obama's amnesty as it was for many in the GOP to oppose former President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain's "path to citizenship." ...the Republican national platform calls for "enforcing the rule of law at the border and throughout the nation" and...

George Will has never been particularly good on immigration, so I was a little surprised by his column calling for an end to automatic citizenship at birth (specifically, for the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens). This has been debated on the Corner before, and I've argued against such a change, but I think it's worth revisiting. There are three issues: legal, empirical, and political. The first is the easiest — there just is no way to argue with a straight face that the drafters of the 14th amendment intended to give citizenship to the children of illegal aliens (Will persuasively...

A south Omaha Catholic church overflowed Sunday with 600 people calling for an overhaul of immigration laws. Across town, 100 people at a United Methodist chapel heard personal stories from immigrants hoping that Congress will create a path to legalization. The local events coincided with a national march in Washington, D.C. -- attended by more than 30 Nebraskans -- that was intended to inject life into the stalled immigration debate. The ultimate goal: to nudge Congress to revamp the country's immigration system, including finding an avenue for undocumented immigrants to gain legal status. A south Omaha Catholic church overflowed Sunday...

President Barack Obama plans to focus attention on immigration next week by meeting at the White House with two senators crafting a bill on the issue. White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro said Obama will meet with Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina on Monday. The president is "looking forward to hearing more about their efforts toward producing a bipartisan bill," Shapiro said Friday. The meeting will be the first Obama has had with Schumer and Graham on the proposal they are developing since they began focusing on it last year. Immigration...

Preoccupied with healthcare and expanding government, Obama is still working full throttle to shove through an immigration reform bill prior to the midterm elections. To appease the influential La Raza movement, Obama met privately with his staff this week to devise a measure that will grant United States citizenship to the country's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

Sarah endorses INCREASING immigration with Glenn Beck: PALIN: Let me address legal immigration and we need to continue to be so welcoming and inviting of those who are represented there by our Statue of Liberty. The immigrants, of course, built this country. And I think republicans, conservatives are at fault when we allow the other side to capture this immigration issue and try to turn this issue into something negative for republicans. I think we need to recognize that again, immigrants built this great country. There are rules to follow if you want to be a part of this great...

There comes a time when you have to ask yourself; are you going to be loyal to an issue or are you going to be loyal to the person? And for Sarah Palin, that time has come. She needs to decide if she is going to be loyal to the issues important to conservatives in Alaska and the nation, or is she going to be loyal to the person: John McCain. Some background. When John McCain won the presidential primary, my first comments on the Anchorage Daily News political blog was a word of warning: Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney...