Presidents Trump and Obama’s rhetoric on immigration are strikingly similar in at least one respect: they both promise(d) to be tough on bad guys and welcoming of good guys. Obama vowed an enforcement regime that focused on “felons, not families.” Trump promised to go after the “bad hombres” while letting in the “wonderful people.” Every … Continued

The New York Times provides an example of chain migration this week. The young engineer arrived in America when he was 23 with a good education and little else. He landed a job at a nuclear test site, and built a home in Nevada. Between the 1970s and the mid-1980s, he brought his wife, mother, … Continued

Big U.S. tech firms received significantly more H-1B visas In fiscal year 2017 (which covers the end of the Obama administration and the first eight months of Trump’s) than they did the year before, and that’s bad news for American workers. Foreign companies, particularly from India, are often scapegoated as the primary “abusers” of H-1B … Continued

Ecology and commerce are once again butting heads in California. And immigration is the elephant in the room. In “California water wars: State plans to cut SF’s Sierra supply to save delta,” Kurt Alexander reports: The West Coast’s largest estuary and a vital water source for much of the state has become short on water … Continued

The titillating subhead on NPR’s web story promises listeners and readers an outrage: Sessions praised immigration restrictions of the 1920s – laws that are widely regarded today as racist. The implication is clear but reporters Mary Louise Kelly and Joel Rose (who has a history of promoting character assassinations) provide little more than murky insinuations … Continued

The sure-fire way to learn what happened at yesterday’s Senate Judiciary hearing about Trump’s zero-tolerance policy is to read the testimonies and watch the hearing in full. If you don’t have 3-plus hours to kill, here are five news reports of the event: “5 things we learned from Congress’ contentious hearing on family separations” by … Continued

This blog was originally posted one year ago, on January 22, 2016. In light of President Trump’s executive order to pause refugee resettlement and prioritize safe zones for Syrian refugees, we are reposting without changes or edits to the original. This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine feature on Syrian refugees demonstrates how the best way … Continued

Fact Check’s Robert Farley looked into Ted Cruz’s claim that Marco Rubio’s immigration bill would have granted legal status (and work permits) to criminal aliens. Farley’s piece, “Cruz Distorts Rubio’s Immigration Stance,” was picked up by USA Today and The Huffington Post among others. Farley concluded that, “one could argue that Rubio’s plan would allow those … Continued

E-Verify's detractors typically oppose the belief held by Barbara Jordan and most Americans that citizens and legal immigrants already here have a greater right to U.S. jobs than job-seekers in the country illegally. Yet they often attempt to undermine E-Verify by predicting massive job losses for American workers. Such is the case in an analysis from the Cato Institute, "Checking E-Verify The Costs and Consequences of a National Worker Screening Mandate."