| Obama Hosts Amnesty Summit at White House  Only days after launching his 2012 re-election bid, President Obama revived the issue of immigration reform with a meeting at the White House last Tuesday. There, the President hosted approximately 70 guests including former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti, Rev. Al Sharpton and former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. (Ventura County Star, April 19, 2011) Although the White House press release on the meeting stated that the President planned to discuss how to “build a bipartisan consensus in Congress” on immigration reform, the White House neither invited any Members of Congress nor law enforcement representatives.
Read the full article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Obama Administration Granted Deferred Action to Over 12,000 Illegal Aliens in 2010  According to data U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) sent to Senator Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) office, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) granted “deferred action” to 12,338 illegal aliens residing in the U.S. in Fiscal Year 2010. The number provided most recently to Senator Grassley is a dramatic increase from the figure DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano provided during last month’s Senate Judiciary Committee’s oversight hearing (there she testified the number of deferred action grantees was less than 900). (See FAIR Legislative Update, Mar. 14, 2011) The authority to grant deferred action status is a discretionary power, not found in statutes or subject to review by the courts. (Id.) Three agencies within DHS—USCIS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP)—have the authority to grant deferred action status when each decides in its own discretion not to remove an illegal alien from the country.
Read the full article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GAO: Criminal Aliens Continue to Burden Taxpayers  On Thursday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report detailing the fiscal and social costs that criminal aliens bear on the American people. (GAO-11-187, Mar. 2011) According to the report, the federal government spent at least $1.5 to $1.6 billion annually from fiscal years 2005 to 2009 to incarcerate criminal aliens. (Id. at 34) Criminal aliens are aliens who are in the U.S. legally or illegally and have been convicted of a crime.
Read the full article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Majority of Americans Believe in True Immigration Reform  According to two separate polls released by Rasmussen last week, a majority of Americans continue to believe that the U.S. needs true immigration reform—not another amnesty. In one of the polls, nearly two-thirds of voters—63 percent—said they believe gaining control of the border is more important than granting amnesty to illegal aliens in the United States. Only 30 percent of those polled said they believed that giving illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship should take precedent over border security. In the other poll conducted by Rasmussen, 61 percent of voters said they believe that a child born in the United States to a woman who is here illegally should not automatically become a U.S. citizen. More information regarding both polls may be viewed here.
Read the full article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indiana House Waters Down Immigration Bill  Last Thursday, the Indiana House of Representatives passed an immigration enforcement bill which originally was modeled on Arizona’s S.B.1070. (SB 590) Unfortunately, before passing the bill, authored by Senator Mike Delph, the House amended the legislation to dilute the power of the bill. One important change the House made to the bill was to eliminate the discretionary authority of policemen to use “reasonable suspicion” as grounds for checking an individual’s immigration status.
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