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[FYI --
1. REAL ID Implementation: Less Expensive, Doable, and Helpful in Reducing Fraud (Backgrounder)
2. The Big Lie Never Dies: The Washington Post on Mass Deportation (Blog)
3. A Small Hyphen's Large Assimilation Results (Blog)
4. Hyphenation vs. Dual Citizenship (Blog)
5. Just How Does an Anchor Baby Anchor the Illegal Alien Parent? (Blog)
6. What's in a Name? Assimilation's Secret Weapon (Blog)
7. Morton Kondracke and the Immigration-Industrial Complex (Blog)
8. Plan B for the Pro-Migration Advocates (Blog)
9. Not Your Father's Latino Officials (Blog)
10. Would Advanced Immigrant Visas for 55,000 Haitians Help Haiti? (Blog)
11. Phoenix ICE Agents Raid Business! (Blog)
12. Decision Makers: Gallegly in House of Representatives, Sperling in White House (Blog)
13. Arlington-Based Outfit Urges India to Fight Against U.S. Interests in WTO (Blog)
-- Mark Krikorian]
1.
REAL ID Implementation: Less Expensive, Doable, and Helpful in Reducing Fraud
By Janice Kephart, January 2011
http://www.cis.org/real-id
Excerpt:The implementation of laws providing for minimum security standards for driver’s license issuance is living up to the claims of its supporters, primarily the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which asserts that driver’s license security is an important step toward national security and reduced fraud at the state level. Equally important, this same 2005 REAL ID law described above, based on recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, is proving to be easier to implement and less expensive than critics have alleged for years. In fact, 11 states have already fulfilled the first stage of REAL ID compliance — meaning they have fulfilled all 18 REAL ID security benchmarks — ahead of the May 2011 deadline. The next stage, in December 2014, requires all those who have reached the age of 50 by that date to be issued a license that complies with the 18 benchmarks. The final stage requires all eligible individuals to be enrolled with REAL ID-complia! nt licenses by December 2017.
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2.
The Big Lie Never Dies: The Washington Post on Mass Deportation
By Stephen Steinlight, January 17, 2011
http://www.cis.org/steinlight/big-lie-never-dies
Excerpt:Despite execrable historical roots, the primary rhetorical strategy employed in the Washington Post editorial 'Immigration impasse ahead' (given a different title online) is the Big Lie. Whether consciously or not, its authors effectively turn George Orwell's critique of mass disinformation in 1984 into praxis to make their central point.
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3.
A Small Hyphen's Large Assimilation Results
By Stanley Renshon, January 17, 2011
http://www.cis.org/renshon/small-hyphens-large-assimilation-results
Excerpt:To understand the role of the hyphen in helping legal immigrants become Americans it is important to keep in mind its role in managing the emotional currents of the immigration process.
Immigration begins with the decision to give up a great deal to make a fresh start in a new country. For most immigrants this requires adjusting to a new culture, a new language, unknown economic prospects, and a lonely existence apart from family, friends, and community.
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4.
Hyphenation vs. Dual Citizenship
By Stanley Renshon, January 16, 2011
http://www.cis.org/renshon/hyphenation-vs-dual-citizenship
Excerpt:Theodore Roosevelt's hyphen animus was as mistaken as it was understandable. He had a country about to go to war and 23 million new immigrants, most of them from the very continent where the war was being fought. And some of these immigrants had mixed feelings about plunging into a conflict that reignited complex feelings about their former home countries.
Roosevelt's major interest in these circumstances was American unity, not immigration theory. And even had he had such interests there was not much knowledge to guide him. In large part because of that great wave of immigration with which Roosevelt had to content, and what we learned from it, we now know a lot more about the process of both immigration and assimilation/integration.
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5.
Just How Does an Anchor Baby Anchor the Illegal Alien Parent?
By David North, January 16, 2011
http://www.cis.org/north/anchor-baby-mechanisms
Excerpt: From a broader policy point of view the presence of the U.S.-citizen child of an illegal alien is part of the whole business of chain migration, a worrisome process to many of us.
As Jon Feere has pointed out in a recent CIS Backgrounder on birthright citizenship, 'family-sponsored immigration accounts for most of the nation's growth in immigration levels. Of the 1,130,818 immigrants who were granted legal permanent residency in 2009, a total of 747,413 (or, 66.1 percent) were family-sponsored immigrants. A change to U.S. immigration laws in the late 1950s – one that allowed for the admission of extended family members outside the nuclear family – resulted in the average annual flow increasing from 250,000 then, to over 1 million today. This number continues to rise every year because of the ever-expanding migration chains that operate independently of any economic downturns or labor needs. Although automatic and universal birthright citizenship is not the only contributor to chain migration, ending it would prevent some of this explosive growth.'
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6.
What's in a Name? Assimilation's Secret Weapon
By Stanley Renshon, January 14, 2011
http://www.cis.org/renshon/assimilations-secret-weapon
Excerpt:One of the most successful tools in the arsenal of assimilation is barely noticed. It is not as obvious as learning English. Its benefits are not as apparent as getting an education, or a job. But it has been instrumental in helping millions of immigrants make the emotional transition from their countries of origin to new attachments that are, in the best circumstances, part of becoming an American.
I am writing about the mighty hyphen.
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7.
Morton Kondracke and the Immigration-Industrial Complex
By Jerry Kammer, January 14, 2011
http://www.cis.org/kammer/kondracke-immigration-industrial-complex
Excerpt:Ever since his days as a regular on the McLaughlin Group, Morton Kondracke struck me as a decent fellow. He was a little conservative for my tastes, but he came across as a fundamentally decent man.
Well, 'Mor-tahn,' as host John McLaughlin famously called him, did some damage to that impression yesterday. In his column for Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper where he is the executive editor, Kondracke declared that Arizona had been reduced to 'a state of Minuteman vigilantism, death threats against politicians and judges, talk-radio demagoguery, and bullying of Latinos and rival politicians by 'America's toughest sheriff.''
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8.
Plan B for the Pro-Migration Advocates
By David North, January 14, 2011
http://www.cis.org/north/plan-b-for-advocates
Excerpt:Now that 'comprehensive immigration reform' is either dead or in slumber for the next two years, the pro-migration people have come up with a somewhat different approach, and it was discussed at a meeting in Washington Thursday.
It is useful to note that the pro-migration advocates, though allied with each other, come in three different groupings. There are the employers, who want lower wages; there are the ethnic organizations who say, in effect, 'Let My People In'; and then there are the intellectuals, represented Thursday at a session of the foundation-supported Migration Policy Institute.
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9.
Not Your Father's Latino Officials
By James R. Edwards Jr., January 13, 2011
http://www.cis.org/edwards/not-your-fathers-latino-officials
Excerpt:Longtime political observer Hastings Wyman at the Southern Political Report recently noted Republican Latino candidates winning more offices from the South in the fall elections. His column is titled 'Latino Republicans Gain in Dixie.'
Wyman is no immigration expert, so his column repeats some of the questionable assertions of conventional wisdom about the Hispanic electorate. It doesn't look at voter turnout levels, which explain a lot in any electoral result. And he gives a hack from the Latino elected officials' group free ink to make unfiltered, unexamined claims.
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10.
Would Advanced Immigrant Visas for 55,000 Haitians Help Haiti?
By David North, January 12, 2011
http://www.cis.org/north/advance-haitian-visas
Excerpt:A Washington Post editorial of a few days ago urged the Obama Administration to let 55,000 Haitian immigrants come to the U.S. despite the fact that they would be jumping the visa-backlog queues and numerical ceilings established by Congress.
There are three sets of considerations here: 1) would this be good for the individuals involved? 2) what consequences would be imposed on the U.S.? and 3) would it be good for Haiti?
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11.
Phoenix ICE Agents Raid Business!
By Jessica Vaughan, January 11, 2011
http://www.cis.org/vaughan/phoenix-ice-raids-business
Excerpt:Today's batch of press releases from ICE included several noteworthy announcements: an impressive successful MS-13 gang prosecution in San Francisco, the continued steady implementation of Secure Communities, and the usual report of a child porn case. But one in the group caught my eye: 'ICE Seizes Counterfeit NFL Jerseys in Phoenix.'
The release tells of how several on-the-ball ICE agents took action to protect Phoenix sports fans from purchasing knock-off NFL jerseys with a dramatic raid on a sports memorabilia store. They seized 163 illegal jerseys. The local ICE office had been tipped off by a 'concerned citizen.'
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12.
Decision Makers: Gallegly in House of Representatives, Sperling in White House
By David North, January 11, 2011
http://www.cis.org/north/gallegly-sperling
Excerpt:There have been two recent Washington personnel decisions that may impact the making of immigration policy, one in the legislative branch, the other in the executive.
Lamar Smith (R-TX), incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, contrary to many expectations, has named longtime Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA) as chair of the immigration subcommittee; Steve King (R- IA) an equally conservative member and until recently the ranking Republican on that subcommittee, had been thought to be in line for the position.
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13.
Arlington-Based Outfit Urges India to Fight Against U.S. Interests in WTO
By David North, January 10, 2011
http://www.cis.org/north/nfap-india-gats
Excerpt:Is it fair play for an American organization to encourage a foreign government to take action against our government in a dispute before an international organization?
Clearly it is OK for an American organization to seek to change the policies of the American government directly, or in alliance with other American organizations. And it would be acceptable for an American organization – say the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce – to seek to change the policies of an international organization, say the UN.
But is it ethical (patriotic?) for an American outfit to use another country's government – in this case India – to stir up trouble against the U.S. government within the World Trade Organization?
