The recent tragic murder of Border Patrol Officer Brian A. Terry by bandits while on patrol near the U.S.-Mexican border was a harsh reminder of the daily dangers of the southern border and the courage of the men and women who are risking their lives every day to protect it. Officer Terry was a military and police veteran who was deeply committed to his mission, and his killers (three of whom are now in custody) deserve whatever they get.

But where everyone else saw tragedy, incoming House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) saw opportunity. In a statement issued almost immediately after the sad news became public, he complained that “[t]he Obama administration’s lax enforcement of immigration laws, coupled with calls for mass amnesty, only encourage more illegal immigration,” and asked “[h]ow many more Americans will die before the Obama administration wakes up and starts taking illegal immigration seriously?”

Mr. Smith has spent too much time in Washington. (READ MORE…)

This headline is so ridiculous that it was just crying to get called out.

For a minute, we shall, as Fox News does, accept the ludicrous premise that foreign-born mothers by the score are having babies on U.S. soil so that about 21-31 years hence, the slowest anchor known to man will finally drop.   If Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz do want U.S. Citizenship, there are far less convoluted ways to go about obtaining it than scheduling to be in Los Angeles on Ms. Cruz’s due date.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that if the Bardem-Cruzes were so inclined, they could apply tomorrow for a green card, which they would receive relatively quickly.  U.S. immigration laws allow for individuals of international renown (Nobel Prize winners, Olympic medalists, and the like) to obtain green cards awarded to “persons of extraordinary ability.”

(READ MORE…)

Today, Senate Democrats took the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) Act off the table, conceding that though the Act passed the House yesterday, there were not enough votes to pass it in the Senate. Had it passed, the Act would have provided undocumented individuals who were brought the United States as children and who have no other pathway to legalization an opportunity to receive legal permanent resident status after attending college or serving in the military for two years.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) was one of DREAM’s biggest detractors. In a letter to his colleagues in the Senate posted by Politico, Sessions accuses the Democratic leadership of attempting to pass a “reckless” and “irresponsible” piece of legislation.

Though the DREAM Act is off the table once again, it is worth addressing what its opponents assert will happen if it passes, since the purported content and consequences of the bill color much of the debate surrounding it.

For now, however, I will address only Sen. Sessions’ first objection in his letter.

(READ MORE…)

Don’t you love it when a YouTube video’s title gives you a preview of the intelligence of its content?

There are too many lies, glosses, red herrings, prevarications, half-truths, and weird misrepresentations mixed into this lumpy pabulum to possibly pick through in one post, but here are some of my favorites:

1) “These children have all the legal rights that you and I do!” (:08)

Despite Fox’s strained attempts (to be further discussed in this space sometime soon) to ignore nearly 150 years of judicial interpretation of the plain text of the 14th Amendment or write its proper application off as a “loophole,” jus soli (“right of soil,” a.k.a. “birthright”) citizenship is as American as the First Amendment and the seventh-inning stretch. It is, despite what Glenn Beck might try to tell you, also the law of the land throughout the rest of North America and in dozens of other nations.

2) “…as opposed to the usual immigrants who have to wait in line!” (:18)

Which line was that, again? (READ MORE…)

There is no line.

Immigration to the United States of America is, as in most developed nations, nothing like a visit to the post office or the DMV. There is nowhere for potential immigrants to walk up and rip off a pointy slip of paper with a number on it while CNN blares into a crowded waiting room. There are no bored clerks behind dusty plexiglass, no uncomfortable wooden benches, no bowl of complimentary mints on the counter. There is no line.

Yet the lie—as with so many of the immigration myths which will be explored in this space—lives on. Both candidates in the 2008 presidential election repeatedly referenced a so-called “amnesty” plan for undocumented immigrants which would include a requirement that previously undocumented immigrants “go to the back of the line” before receiving residency. Both our current President and the army of right-wing media demagogues who oppose him continue to frame the conversation in terms of “the line.” But there is no line.

It is our position that continuing to discuss immigration into the United States in terms of a “line” does nothing to move the conversation forward. This anachronistic shorthand is, at best, factually inaccurate and, at worst, ethically irresponsible when used by anyone who should know better. The image of “the line” presumes that anyone in the world who is willing to wait it out should be able to immigrate to the United States “the right way,” where the simple truth is that upwards of 99% of the population of the Earth simply has no legal ability to do so. It provides haters with more fuel (“why can’t those line-jumpers just wait their turn?”), policymakers with a flawed and incomplete perspective, and citizens and immigrants alike with a way of thinking about immigration which has no grounding in reality. There is no line.

Perhaps a better way to think about current U.S. immigration policy would be to imagine an unbelievably exclusive after-hours nightclub. (READ MORE…)