• CBP reports 2012 increase in arrests on the border

    Customs and Border Protection (CBP) chief Michael Fisher told a Senate committee last week that arrests of illegal border crossers have gone up 13 percent this year. The increase in arrests last year breaks a 7-year trend of decreasing arrests along the border.

  • Lawmakers defeat Sen. Cruz’s amendment because of its cost

    Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), saying the Gang of Eight’s immigration overhaul draft does not provide DHS with sufficient incentives to bolster border security, offers an amendment which would substantially increase border security funding. Fellow GOP lawmakers say the price tag — $30-$40 billion – is too high, and defeat the amendment.

  • Sen. Rubio slams Heritage Foundation report on cost of immigration reform

    Senator Marco Rubio(R-Florida) wasted little time attacking a report by the Heritage Foundation which estimated that new immigration overhaul legislation, of which Rubio is one of the authors, would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion over fifty years. “The Heritage Foundation is] the only group that’s looked at [immigration reform] and reached the conclusion they’ve reached. Everybody else who has analyzed immigration reform understands that if you do it, and we do it right, it will be a net positive for our economy. Their argument is based on a single premise, which I think is flawed,” Rubio added. “That is these people are disproportionately poor because they have no education and they will be poor for the rest of their lives in the U.S. Quite frankly, that’s not the immigration experience in the U.S. That’s certainly not my family’s experience in the U.S.”

  • Co-author of Heritage report: Hispanic immigrants have lower IQ than white Americans

    In a 2009 public policy doctoral dissertation, the co-author of the Heritage Foundation immigration report wrote that Hispanic immigrants are less intelligent than white Americans. “Immigrants living in the U.S. today do not have the same level of cognitive ability as natives,” Jason Richwine, a senior policy analyst at Heritage, wrote. “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach I.Q. parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-I.Q. children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”

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  • DHS now willing to discuss deportation policy with agents' union

    In an effort to head off a possible set back in  court, the Obama administration said earlier this week that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents’ lawsuit to overturn the president’s selective deportation policy should be thrown out court because the agents originally wanted to handle the issues through collective bargaining.

  • GOP opponents of the immigration bill gearing up for a campaign to kill it

    Republicans opposed to the bi-partisan Senate immigration bill are getting set to launch a campaign to defeat the bill, as the Senate Judiciary Committee begins a review on the bill Thursday. The committee is expected to spend at least three weeks on the bill, with GOP lawmakers opposing the bill ready to offer hundreds of amendments — some in an effort to make the bill more acceptable to them, others in an effort to kill it.

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  • Sponsors: Immigration bill addresses visa flaws highlighted by the Boston bombing

    Lawmakers behind the bipartisan Senate immigration say bill directly addresses some of the security flaws that may have been exploited by the foreign student who helped Dzhokhar Tsarnaev dispose of evidence after the Boston Marathon bombings.

  • DHS instructs border agents to verify all international student visas

    DHS has sent a direct order to its Border Agents telling them that, “effective immediately,” they must verify that every international student who arrives in the United States has a valid student visa The student visa of Azamat Tazhayakov, one of the two Kazakh students charged with trying to destroy evidence related to the Boston Marathon bombing, was terminated before he arrived in New York on 20 January, but the border agent in the airport did not have access to DHS Department’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System.

  • Obama says same-sex amendment to immigration bill not likely to pass

    President Barack Obama announced at a news conference in Costa Rica on Friday that he backs a proposal which would allow Americans to seek legal immigration for their same-sex partners. Obama said that it was “the right thing to do,” but he acknowledged that the provision has little chance of making it into the final immigration package.

  • Obama warning liberals to be flexible on immigration bill

    Many in Washington have been worried about Republican objections to the immigration overhaul bill, but President Obama and leading Democrats have begun a quiet campaign to assuage the concerns of liberal groups which argue that the bill excludes too many immigrants and makes the path to citizenship too arduous.

  • Rubio says immigration reform bill will likely not pass the House

    Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) said on a talk radio show on Tuesday that the bipartisan immigration reform legislation unveiled last week, will likely not pass the Republican-led House. “[The bill] will have to be adjusted, because people are very suspicious about the willingness of the government to enforce the laws now,” Rubio said.

  • U.S. tech companies actively lobbying for immigration reform

    Last year, only 14 percent of immigrants (around 144,000 people) were granted a green card owing to their skills and contribution to the U.S. economy. The rest of the green cards were given mostly based on family ties of the applicants to U.S. citizens. Under the Senate immigration proposal, 50 percent of future green cars would be based on skills and employment opportunities. Leading U.S. tech companies are actively campaigning in support of the proposal.

  • Immigration reform conditioned on border being secured by unmanned vehicles

    Between 2006 and 2011, CBP spent $55.3 million on drone use and maintenance operations, according to a DHS Inspector General (IG) report. The IG recommended that the agency stop buying drones because the aircrafts are costly to maintain and have flown significantly less than their predicted flight times. The bipartisan immigration proposal drafted by the bipartisan Gang of Eight includes a provision which would create a 24/7 border surveillance system heavily dependent on the use of drones.

  • Canada considered deporting train terror suspect – but he was stateless

    Raed Jaser, who is accused of planning an “al Qaeda supported” bomb attack aiming to derail a Canadian passenger train, was arrested nine years ago in Toronto and was facing deportation because he had a criminal record. Jaser is a Palestinian who grew up in the UAE. The UAE never gave his family a UAE citizenship, and they refused to take him back. The Canadian authorities say his case is not unique.

  • Sen. Cornyn, critics exchange charges over immigration reform measure

    Texas critics charge that Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) is likely to oppose the Gang of Eight bipartisan immigration overhaul proposal, even though it meets his demands on border security, because he is worried about a Tea Party primary challenge. Cornyn disagrees.