Washington Post can’t contain its own harsh rhetoric

By Jeremy Beck

The Washington Post’s February 16 story, “Prince William’s struggle offers mixed lessons for immigration reform,” included a sentence remarkable not only for its incendiary tone but also for the fact that neither the reporters who filed the story nor their editors thought to revise their inflammatory language. “Prince William has changed dramatically since 2007,” the reporters stated, … Continued

Immigration Enforcement: A Tale of Two Reports (and an anecdote)

By Jeremy Beck

The Obama administration spends more money on immigration enforcement than all other enforcement agencies combined, according to a report from the Migration Policy Institute. The report has gotten a lot of media attention this week. * (Update: Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration noted in the National Review that the MPI authors acknowledged that they reached … Continued

Wither Credibility?

By Jeremy Beck

A recent story in the New York Times, “Deportations Continue Despite U.S. Review of Backlog,” reported that DHS officials expect to suspend the deportation orders of at least 20,600 people by the end of 2012. In one striking sentence, the story depicts a president caught between his obligation to enforce the law and his desire … Continued

Gannett: Fanning the Flames With Falsehoods

By Jeremy Beck

Has anyone in Alabama read HB 56? The answer is surely “yes,” but none of them appear to have been involved in the story “Hundreds from across state protest immigration law,” published May 28 in the Montgomery Advertiser, which describes people protesting Alabama’s immigration law as wanting “others to understand their frustrations, concerns, and in … Continued

H.R. 2885 would open up jobs, save taxpayers billions, and reunite families

By Jeremy Beck

Put three of this month’s big immigration stories together, add a critical statistic missing from all of them and you get a powerful argument for passing the Legal Workforce Act (H.R. 2885).       First big story: net immigration (legal and illegal) from Mexico to the U.S. has dropped to zero (“For first time … Continued

New York Times withholds key fact in story

By Jeremy Beck

The New York Times’ April 23 story, “Justices to Rule on Role of the States in Immigration,” was frightening, but dishonest. The anti-enforcement wing of the agricultural lobby must have been pleased with the Times piece which portrayed farmers as the hapless victims of state enforcement laws run amok (the photo for the story online … Continued

‘Uncle Obama’ wins a driver’s license for working illegally

By Jeremy Beck

An April 3 story in the Boston Herald,  “Uncle Obama on the roads again,” reported that Onyango Obama, the president’s uncle and a Kenyan national who has been living and working illegally in the U.S. since 1963 – even after he was ordered deported in 1992 – “scored his limited [driver’s] license yesterday from the Registry’s … Continued

Sustainable Immigration (Part 4 of 4): America’s natural resources and environment

By Jeremy Beck

The economist Kenneth Boulding, the environmental adviser to President Kennedy, once famously said, “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad – or an economist.” This is the fourth of four blogs concerning immigration-sustainability questions policymakers should address. Part One: American Workers Part Two: The Middle … Continued

Sustainable Immigration (part 3 of 4): American Taxpayers

By Jeremy Beck

The immigration questions asked during the MSNBC/Politico and CNN/Tea Party Republican presidential debates approached immigration from an ethnic perspective. The media missed the chance to press the eight candidates on the larger impacts of immigration policy. Census data analyzed by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that the U.S. will add 30 million new residents … Continued