Our Low Tech Commitment to High Tech Border Security

Tempted as I am to rant and rave over this latest stunning fiasco just revealed about ANOTHER failure in our national immigration security…I will spare you.  I went to the Holocaust museum today and I am drained.  But here is a brief chronology of events from the point of view of this former State Department FSO who's been pushing for biometric IDs for the last two decades:1988- As a first tour Visa Officer in Juarez, Mexico, my boss "volunteers" me, the fraud officer, to spend a few Saturday mornings training El Paso border agents on the recognition of fraudulent entry documents.  What sounds like a real drag turns out to be quite interesting.  After the third Saturday I have a roomful of border cops who understand the concept of biometrics and agree t…

One Last Immigration Fiasco from the Bush Administration

Well, just when I thought the extraordinary missteps and bungled results of the Bush administration's catastrophic failure to grasp even the basic fundamentals of migratory policy were near their end, he did it again:  amidst much pomp and circumstance in the Rose Garden yesterday, and utterly oblivious to the consequences of his actions, the President announced the following : "I'm pleased to stand with the representativesof seven countries — the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,Lithuania, Slovakia, and South Korea — that have met the requirements tobe admitted to the United States Visa Waiver Program. Soon the citizens ofthese nations will be able to travel to the United States for business ortourism without a visa." [Emphasis supplied]You would think t…

WIth Liberty and Justice…for SOME

The Fed's GAO office just released a statistical study of how political asylum applicants in the U.S. fare in their filings.  The results are simply more proof of what we already know…that the U.S. immigration is so hopelessly, pathetically, completely broken that the next President needs to make its reform one of his first initiatives in office…no matter HOW little mainstream Americans seem to care.  If we care about justice, we need to fix this and fix this NOW.Before I point out the stats, I need to explain something to those of you who are not up to speed on the reality of political asylum applications.  You've probably heard the long-unresolved argument between those who distinguish between "political" refugees — i.e., protected by asylum laws -…

It’s Basic Supply and Demand

Once again, the xenophobes are proven wrong: despite the hysteria, illegal immigration to the U.S. is the direct result of U.S. labor shortages, and when the jobs stop coming…so do the illegal migrants.The Associated Press reported today that, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington think tank, the number of illegal immigrants entering the United States has slowed significantly the past few years, falling below the number of those entering the country legally.  The report estimates there were 11.9 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. as of March. That would be a decline of 500,000 from the center's estimate a year ago.  Speculation by most experts is that this is due to the nation's struggling economy and stepped up enforcement of immigration laws.  …