“Center for Immigration Studies” on The Daily Caller

An administration Dec. 29 memo declares that illegal immigrants may have to be held until they’re convicted in local courts before the federal government will begin deportation proceedings. (more)

How do we get beyond the inflammatory and self-defeating polemics of our current immigration debate?  Sadly, the new Congress is shaping up to be just as divisive and deadlocked as the last one. (more)

Immigration is a contentious issue in America, so much so that even seemingly inseparable interest groups find themselves divided. Currently members of the environmental movement, while not in a dispute of Montague/Capulet proportions, are torn between their liberal allegiance and empirical evidence. (more)

Two of the summer’s most controversial local immigration laws have just been rendered almost useless because of the threat of impending lawsuits. (more)

U.S. Assistant Attorney General Tony West and his team may or may not have a future in constitutional law.  But judging from the government’s brief in their suit to enjoin enforcement of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s infamous immigration bill, they might just have a future in comedy. (more)

Gabriela Saucedo Mercer now has fans around the country. Talk radio stars Glenn Beck and Tammy Bruce have spoken about her and the YouTube video in which she stars has received more than a quarter million hits and counting. What did Saucedo-Mercer do to bring herself to national notice? (more)

In the lead-up to the health care reform debate, some observers argued that the White House should focus on passing smaller and more manageable pieces of legislation rather than pushing “comprehensive” reform. We may never know if this more modest strategic approach—endorsed by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel but rejected by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi— might have proven more effective, and ultimately more popular, than Obama Care. But the issue of legislative method—and its efficacy in a bitterly divided, partisan Congress—is instructive because Obama faces a similar challenge on another first-term policy initiative—immigration reform—with the strong possibility that another legislative debacle could occur. (more)

The United States is facing the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. As the unemployment rate stubbornly hovers around 10 percent—15 percent for those without a high school diploma—job creation is our most pressing domestic issue. (more)

Democrats and Republicans continue to be at loggerheads over immigration policy. The central bone of contention is the insistence by Senate Democrats that the estimated 12 million illegal aliens currently residing in the U.S. be granted a path to citizenship. House Republicans decry the Democrats’ legalization plan as an “amnesty,” and want to see border and workplace enforcement systems strengthened. They don’t come right out and say that they want to see all illegal aliens deported en masse. It’s not politically popular and the government lacks the means to do it. But the idea is, once an effective workplace verification system is in place, those without legal papers would be identified quickly, fired, and then reported to immigration. Lacking access to work, and under threat of deportation, most would have no choice but to “voluntarily” return to their native land. (more)