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[FYI --
1. Reining in Zadvydas v. Davis (Memorandum)
2. The Hispanic Vote in 2010 (Memorandum)
3. Immigration and ‘Secure Communities’ (Op-ed)
4. Mixing a Sub-Par Deal with a Ticket to the USA (Blog)
5. Obama's Emerging Un-Border Policy: 'Acceptable Levels of Illegal Immigration' (Blog)
6. Open-Border Groups in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting (Blog)
7. Arizona Catches a Break from the Supreme Court (Blog)
8. Creating Facts on the Ground (Blog)
9. The Magnitude of the E-Verify Win (Blog)
10. Arizona 1, Open-Borders Lobby 0 (Blog)
11. Musings on Migration Statistics (Blog)
12. Lamar Smith Acts to 'Keep Our Communities Safe' (Blog)
13. Dear Mr. President: How About a Border Strategy? (Blog)
-- Mark Krikorian]
1.
Reining in Zadvydas v. Davis
By Jon Feere
CIS Memorandum, May 25, 2011
http://www.cis.org/stopping-release-of-criminal-aliens
Excerpt: According to the Inspector General, nearly 134,000 immigrants with final orders of removal have been released into the United States from 2001 to 2004. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, nearly 4,000 dangerous criminal immigrants have been released into the United States each year since 2008. An untold number of these aliens have gone on to commit additional, horrific crimes.
This Memorandum details the Supreme Court’s problematic holding in Zadvydas v. Davis and highlights some of the issues raised by the decision. It also notes Congress’ attempt to resolve some of the issues legislatively. Ultimately, the political branches must assert their inherent authority over immigration regulation if public safety is the goal.
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2.
The Hispanic Vote in 2010
By Steven A. Camarota and Ashley Monique Webster
CIS Memorandum, May 23, 2011
http://www.cis.org/hispanic-vote-2010-no-trend
Excerpt: Before the 2010 election some commentators argued that the failure to address immigration would increase Hispanic turnout, while others argued it would cause them to stay home. New Census Bureau voting data show that neither of these predictions was correct. Hispanic turnout conformed to the pattern of recent mid-term elections.
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3.
Immigration and ‘Secure Communities’
By Jessica Vaughan and Mike Stopa
Boston Globe, May 24, 2011
http://www.cis.org/node/2820
Excerpt: Most illegal immigrants worry about being deported, so it is not unusual that they fear the police. This fear erupted into protests when Governor Patrick announced in December that Massachusetts would implement Secure Communities, a federal program that helps Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) coordinate efforts with state and local police to find and remove criminal illegal immigrants.
Under this program, the fingerprints of arrested criminal suspects would be checked against federal immigration databases. In Boston, where it was first piloted, in the last two years, ICE put 268 felons on the path to removal to their home countries.
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4.
Mixing a Sub-Par Deal with a Ticket to the USA
By David North
CIS Blog, May 29, 2011
http://www.cis.org/north/mixing-a-sub-par-deal
Excerpt: If the job does not pay much, or if the investment is shaky, the way for big business to close the deal is to add a ticket to America to the formula – and the migrant quickly falls in line with a body for the job, or a sum of money for the investment.
For example, many of the exploited guestworkers recruited to work in the Marianas Island sweatshops a dozen years ago were naive young women from rural China; they were sometimes told that 'Los Angeles is just a bus ride away from the factory site'.
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5.
Obama's Emerging Un-Border Policy: 'Acceptable Levels of Illegal Immigration'
By Janice Kephart
CIS Blog, May 27, 2011
http://www.cis.org/kephart/emerging-unborder-policy
Excerpt: The light is getting brighter and the resolution starker on the 'no apprehension policy' being imposed on Border Patrol agents by their superiors: it may be part of an emerging 'un-border' policy based on a view that we are currently experiencing 'acceptable levels of illegal immigration', which logically means we can reduce the numbers of Border Patrol on the ground.
I just wrote about the president's lack of policy being a major problem in analyzing his El Paso immigration speech. Perhaps it was more fun to discuss border security as being an 'alligator in a moat' solution, rather than fess up to this new policy of operational un-control of the border. Yet it would have been fun. The president could have joked about it like he did border security by calling it an 'operational barely-there control' policy, 'operation blind-eye', or even 'operation open borders'.
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6.
Open-Border Groups in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting
By Jon Feere
CIS Blog, May 27, 2011
http://www.cis.org/feere/open-border-groups-in-chamber-v-whiting
Excerpt: For many years the open-border crowd has pushed hard to perpetuate illegal employment throughout the United States, but today, in Chamber of Commerce of the United States v. Whiting, the Supreme Court has put an end to their anti-E-Verify effort. Many amnesty groups submitted briefs to the Court in support of the Chamber of Commerce in an attempt to get Arizona's law blocked. The list of groups involved in the lawsuit, below, includes the American Immigration Lawyers Association, La Raza, the SEIU, and the notorious Southern Poverty Law Center. Even though this list represents only the tip of the iceberg, it is a good reminder of what the pro-enforcement crowd is up against:
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7.
Arizona Catches a Break from the Supreme Court
By Janice Kephart
CIS Blog, May 26, 2011
http://www.cis.org/kephart/arizona-catches-a-break
Excerpt: Wow. E-Verify. Our hard-working worker authorization program catches a break from the Supreme Court. Let me first be grateful to Supreme Court Justice Kagan; her recusal helped support redemption for Arizona, our national punching bag for the Department of Justice as of late. As Solicitor General, Kagan had authored the (poorly argued) brief stating that the Supreme Court should review the Ninth Circuit decision and questioned whether Arizona's E-Verify law was pre-empted by federal immigration law. In the end her recusal didn't really matter; the win was 5-3, and a bit of a surprise to those of us that had been watching the E-Verify drama roll out over these past few years and deeply concerned that the Supreme Court would support the administration's position to cancel out Arizona's worker authorization law. Whowouldathunkit?
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8.
Creating Facts on the Ground
By Mark Krikorian
CIS Blog, May 26, 2011
http://www.cis.org/krikorian/creating-facts-on-the-ground
Excerpt:The Supremes' complete repudiation of the Chamber of Commerce/Obama administration opposition to state E-Verify requirements will likely result in such mandates making more progress in the states' next legislative sessions; Georgia passed a mandate this year, and the Chamber's strategy of scaring lawmakers away from E-Verify with the bogeyman of Arizona's SB1070 won’t work any more.
Of course, the point of the push for such state E-Verify mandates isn't really to get all 50 states to sign on separately, but to move Congress to pass a national E-Verify mandate, something House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith would very much like to do. The state mandates help this along in two ways: First, they obviously create political momentum. But in a more practical sense, as more states require use of E-Verify — whether for all employers or just state agencies and/or state contractors — a larger and larger share of the nation's hiring will be run through the system, increasingly making it a standard part of the employment process. In other words, the goal is to make E-Verify a fait accompli, so that when Congress finally gets around to passing the national requirement, it will be more of a mopping-up operation than the imposition of an unfamiliar requirement on unsuspecting employers. And I think we're already getting close to that tipping ! point.
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9.
The Magnitude of the E-Verify Win
By Mark Krikorian
CIS Blog, May 26, 2011
http://www.cis.org/krikorian/magnitude-of-the-everify-win
Excerpt: The reason the administration and the Chamber of Commerce saw this case as so important is that they want to hold back mandatory E-Verify as their main bargaining chip for what they really want out of a 'comprehensive' immigration deal — amnesty for the Obama administration and massive increases in imported captive labor ('guestworkers') for the Chamber. The decision makes it more likely Congress will be able to pass such a mandate on its own, not bundled with any amnesty or guestworker provisions. In other words, it's not just a win for enforcement but also a setback for amnesty and increased immigration.
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10.
Arizona 1, Open-Borders Lobby 0
By James R. Edwards Jr.
CIS Blog, May 26, 2011
http://www.cis.org/edwards/arizona-1-open-borders-lobby-0
Excerpt: The U.S. Supreme Court has come down on the side of federalism, the constitutional principle that states reserve the rights not delegated by them to the federal government (that is, over the vast majority of matters). It has ruled in favor of Arizona and against apologists for illegal foreign workers and the businesses that steal American jobs.
By 5-3, with Obama appointee and former solicitor general Elena Kagan abstaining, the high court decided in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting that states are well within their prerogative to make use of a federal tool (E-Verify) in order to promote a state interest (ensuring a legal workforce).
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11.
Musings on Migration Statistics
By David North
CIS Blog, May 25, 2011
http://www.cis.org/north/musings-on-migration-statistics
Excerpt: Judge Mark H. Metcalf's new CIS Backgrounder, 'Built to Fail: Deception and Disorder in America's Immigration Courts', reminds me that the four cabinet departments dealing with international migration have totally different ways of handling migration statistics, two in deplorable ways, and two in a more or less acceptable manner.
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12.
Lamar Smith Acts to 'Keep Our Communities Safe'
By Jessica Vaughan
CIS Blog, May 25, 2011
http://www.cis.org/vaughan/keep-our-communities-safe-hearing
Excerpt: Every year, ICE releases about 4,000 criminal aliens back into U.S. communities because their home countries will not accept them for deportation, and because the Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot be detained indefinitely. This group includes murderers, rapists, cop killers, child predators, and gang members who are then free to continue their life of crime here, and they get a work permit in case their crime doesn't pay enough. Yesterday, the House immigration subcommittee held a hearing on this problem and on a new bill (H.R. 1932) to address it, introduced by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX).
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13.
Dear Mr. President: How About a Border Strategy?
By Janice Kephart
CIS Blog, May 24, 2011
http://www.cis.org/kephart/how-about-a-border-strategy
Excerpt: On May 11, the White House issued 'Statements of Support for President Obama's Commitment to Fix our Broken Immigration System', listing business leaders, elected officials, labor unions, and 'immigration reform' advocates. The focus of the comments was on the economics of immigration, and the need to rebuild our businesses and universities with foreign workers and foreign students. Strangely, these comments were affiliated with the president's speech in El Paso, Texas which, strangely again, would seem a venue to talk border security as much as discuss border economics. Instead, it was a speech lined with the soft down of amnesty in a variety of forms. No answers, no strategy, no legislation, just niceties for the illegal population. The words for fellow Americans who oppose amnesty because they live on the border or who believe that laws should be enforced or who are concerned about national security and the spillover of cartel activity in the US – for t! hem, the president held a much harsher tone.
