I'll be in Dallas at the Texas State Fairgrounds the next few days at the largest Earth Day exposition in the country, presenting our massive new study, VANISHING OPEN SPACES.
In a letter to President Obama, 22 Republican senators said the deportation policy changes under consideration by DHS would represent “a near complete abandonment of basic immigration enforcement and discard the rule of law and the notion the United States has enforceable borders.” The letter warns Obama to improve immigration enforcement, not look for ways to weaken it.
Our latest study on sprawl -- "VANISHING OPEN SPACES: How an Exploding U.S. Population Is Devouring the Land that Feeds and Nourishes Us" -- tells a sad tale of woe for the nation's farmland and natural habitat. In just the eight years from 2002 to 2010, over 8.3 million acres (approximately 13,000 square miles) of farmland and natural habitat succumbed to the bulldozer's blade. That is an area larger than the entire state of Maryland -- cleared, scraped, filled, paved and built over -- in less than a decade.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Arizona’s appeal of a lower court ruling on the state’s “harboring” law. The 9th U.S. Court of Appeals had blocked implementation of the measure, which made it a state crime to knowingly harbor or transport illegal aliens.
USA Today's April 15th story, "Obama deporter in chief? Not quite." by Alan Gomez is the most straightforward and succinct attempt to clarify President Obama's deportation record to date.
On Wednesday, Pres. Obama sent mixed messages to the American people. In the first half of the day, he once again expressed his support for the Senate-approved amnesty bill, S.744, that would issue more than 30 million lifetime work permits in the first decade. In the afternoon, he told a group of working-class Americans that he'd like to spend $600 million more to expand programs that train low-skilled American workers for high-tech jobs that pay more money.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Speaker John Boehner and certain key House Republicans recently told donors and special interest groups they still want to pass immigration legislation this year. President Obama continues his push for comprehensive amnesty today in a meeting he hopes will persuade the American Legion to drop their opposition to inclusion of the ENLIST Act in the defense authorization bill.
Pres. Obama called House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Wednesday shortly after issuing a public statement that included harsh criticism for House Republicans who he says are blocking the Senate's comprehensive amnesty bill. After the call, and in light of a tough primary challenge, Cantor took a hardline position against the Senate bill and said the President has no desire to work with House Republicans on a solution to the issue.
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich opposes increasing the H-1B cap (see below). I wonder if he is aware that the Obama Administration's proposed rule change to give work permits to the spouses of H-1B holders is an attempt to work around the cap.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The American Legion says it is opposed to trying to tie immigration into the annual defense policy debate, calling it an unacceptable “amnesty” and dealing a serious blow to Republicans desperate to pass some sort of legalization of illegal immigrants ahead of November’s elections. ...
The Obama administration has averaged about 400,000 deportations annually – a number that includes people who are stopped crossing the border illegally.
Immigration rights activists complain that Obama has the highest number of deportations of any administration. Opponents of illegal immigration, like the NumbersUSA organization, say those numbers are high and misleading because who gets tallied as a deportation case has changed and now includes people attempting to cross into the country.
House Democrats are urging 30 Republicans who've said they support some form of amnesty to sign a discharge petition and force a floor vote on H.R. 15, their comprehensive amnesty bill. "We're calling out the members of the House…who have said they support immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship," said Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo. "We're saying, 'Do something about your support…(P)ut their pen where their mouth is."