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BEND, Ore. - As about a dozen supporters rallied outside, a man and woman protesting Republicans' inaction on immigration reform staged a sit-in at Rep. Greg Walden's Bend office Wednesday, saying they won't leave until they are arrested -- and they were.

After police were called to the Bond Street office of the congressman, Greg Delgado and Ann Havill still refused to leave, were cited for criminal trespass and released, said Officer Rob Emerson.

Here's the news release issued earlier by Causa, a statewide Latino immigrant rights organization:

It’s been nearly a year since the U.S. Senate passed the bipartisan immigration bill, and during that time, House Republicans have used nearly every excuse in the book as to why they can’t finish the job and pass comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship.

Today, in solidarity with actions happening around the nation, members of the Central Oregon community are holding a sit-in and rally at Congressman Greg Walden's District office in Bend. They are demanding that Congressman Walden take action immediately on reforming our nation's broken immigration system.

“He has admitted that the system is broken, but he has yet to do anything”, said Greg Delgado, Causa's Central Oregon Organizer. “ We urge him to sign the discharge petition, take action on the Immigration Reform Bill already passed by the U.S. Senate or have the U.S. House create a bill.”

Delgado added, “It’s now or never for the GOP. We’re here today to remind Congressman Walden and Republicans: your time is nearly up. They either heed the calls of their constituents and call Speaker Boehner to demand he schedule a vote by June 28^th, or sit idly as their party kisses the White House—and eventually Congress—goodbye for decades to come.”

“The future of the Republican Party is on the line," he added." "Doing nothing will sever their ties with Latino, Asian, and immigrant voters for decades. Unless they come out publicly against the Republican obstruction, every House Republican is responsible for blocking immigration reform, and they will be blamed for tearing apart our families and communities.”

STOP SEPARATING FAMILIES: We are calling on Congressman Greg Walden and Republicans to show moral courage and leadership by calling for a vote in the House on Comprehensive Immigration Reform with a path to citizenship.

Who: Human rights advocates, farmworkers, students, faith leaders, labor community and Central Oregon residents committed to passing immigration reform that respects the dignity and the rights of all immigrants and includes a path to citizenship. Read more about Sit-in protesters arrested at Walden's Bend office

But didn't the press report that 36 percent of the top technology companies were founded by immigrants?

Yes it did. The figures came from a presentation by Mary Meeker. That presentation includes this slide making that very claim. Naturally, Ms. Meeker followed that slide with the obligatory call for more cheap foreign workers on H-1B visas.

Like Ms. Meeker I, too, have read How to Lie With Statistics. You are supposed to see her figures showing 36 percent of companies are founded by immigrants and think that means only 64 percent are founded by natives — a huge disparity given the number of immigrants. However, Ms. Meekers has used a trick with numbers; she counts as "founded by immigrants" any company that has at least one of its often multiple founders who was born abroad or who had at least one parent born abroad.

But that trick works both ways. All you have to do is flip her numbers around; instead of ignoring the native-born Americans, ignore the immigrants.

For example, Texas Instruments had four founders: John Erik Jonsson (born Brooklyn, N.Y.), Eugene McDermott (born Brooklyn, N.Y.), Patrick Haggarty (born Harvey, N.D.), Cecil Green (born U.K.). Ms. Meeker ignored Jonsson, McDermott, and Haggarty in favor of Green and called Texas Instruments a company founded by immigrants. Do the opposite and ignore Green. Then Texas Instruments becomes a company founded by native-born Americans.

Doing the same reversal for the rest of the companies produces this result (bolded companies native-founded).

• Apple
• Google
• Microsoft
• IBM
• Oracle
• Facebook
• Amazon.com
• Qualcomm
• Intel
• Cisco
• Ebay
• HP
• Priceline
• EMC
• Texas Instruments
• VMWare
• ADP
• Yahoo
• Salesforce.com
• Adobe
• Micron
• Netflix
• Intuit
• Sandisk

Twenty-two out of the top 24 (92 percent) of top technology companies started in the United States were founded by natives.

This list has one fewer entry than Ms. Meeker's. I dropped Cognizant because Cognizant was not founded in the United States. It was started in India by Dun & Bradstreet as a means to offshore American jobs. Four years later, in 1994, the headquarters was moved to New Jersey. Cognizant remains a leader in America job destruction. In other words, Cognizant represents precisely the type of entity that America should keep out of the country. In any event, calling Cognizant an immigrant-founded company is a stretch.

The statistical lie is only the first misstep in the argument. Next comes the non sequitur. The fact that Sergey Brin came to the United States as a child and years later became a cofounder of Google does not support the argument that American needs more H-1B guest workers.

Outsiders who recognize this statistical lie in a study frequently ask me to do one from the opposite side. But I just cannot bring myself to assisting in lowering the debate this way. While the cheap labor lobby sees the need to denigrate native-born Americans, I see no need to diminish the contributions of immigrants. I just show, as here, why this kind of analysis is nonsense.

Along with regression analysis without causation and correlation, this form of statistical lie is one of the most common tricks used to support more cheap, foreign labor. My colleague David North has written about this previously (see here and here). The inflation trick used here for founding companies also works for patent production. Also notice the broader you define a founder, the greater the distortion this trick creates. Some studies using this trick have used "key contributor" to define a founder, so that early employees get included.

The cheap labor lobby will continue to use this technique as long as they can get the complacent American media to print their bogus numbers. Read more about 92% of Top Tech Companies Created in the U.S. Were Founded by Native-Born Americans

Republicans are already in the beginning stages of planning their legislative agenda if they take control of the Senate in November, and many say immigration reform would be a top priority, even while President Obama's trustworthiness as a legislative partner remains in doubt.

“I don’t know anyone who thinks the immigration system is working the way it should, so we’re gonna have some ideas and we’re going to move them across the floor in smaller consensus — on a consensus basis. And not the sort of divisive, all-or-nothing, pig-in-the-python sort of method,” Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn told Breitbart News last week when asked about the prospect of a GOP-controlled Senate pushing its own immigration reform agenda.

Days earlier, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said Republicans would “absolutely” try to pass better immigration reform legislation if the GOP wins the Senate in November.

Even some noted anti-amnesty hawks sounded relatively optimistic.

“I think there is a better prospect that we would go forward with some immigration initiative if the Republicans control the Senate, but we still have the problem of trusting the president. But I think we’d be in a better position to try and enforce the law if we have both the House and the Senate,” Texas Republican Lamar Smith told Breitbart Tuesday.

House Republicans are quick to point out the lack of confidence many have in the Obama administration’s willingness to fully implement what Congress passes.

South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy noted that the GOP has controlled the Senate before without passing immigration reform and alluded to concerns about Obama’s lack of enforcement of immigration law.

“That is a very legitimate concern,” Gowdy said of Obama’s enforcement of the law, “and releasing detainees, some of whom have criminal records, really undercuts the authenticity of the president’s argument that he wants to do something.” Gowdy added, “That is impossible to explain.”

A recent report revealed that last year the Obama administration released more than 36,000 criminal immigrants, convicted of nearly 88,000 crimes and awaiting the outcome of deportation proceedings.

The Obama factor is not lost on one of the most vocal Republican backers of immigration reform, but for another reason.

“No matter who pushes immigration, here is your dilemma: We’re not going to get the visas we want, or the border security we want, and the employer verification we want without dealing with the 11 million,” said South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, who helped pass an immigration reform bill in the Senate last year.

“President Obama is still going to be president, there is no way he is going to sign a bill into law that doesn’t have some kind of firm, fair treatment of the 11 million, so that’s reality. We may have the House and the Senate but we don’t have the White House,” he added.

While many Republicans say they are for immigration reform, Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks said it is all in the definitions.

“I would say that over 90 percent of congressmen and senators are for immigration reform,” Brooks said Monday, adding that he is for immigration reform himself. “The problem is we have wildly different meanings when we use the phrase immigration reform. To me, for example, getting someone in the White House who enforces our laws and deports illegal aliens, that’s immigration reform. But that is not what Chuck Schumer, or Harry Reid, or Barack Obama mean.”

According to Brooks, Schumer, Reid, and Obama are looking at the current illegal immigrant population as future voters who will influence elections for the Democratic party.

Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz Balart (R-FL), on the other hand, has previously warned that Obama may unilaterally enact amnesty, blowing up the chances of a legislative deal. Asked about 2015, he was circumspect.

“I don’t want to talk about hypotheticals, but just a mathematical reality is that we need to do something based on Republican, conservative principles; but we’re going to have to get a few Democrats, obviously, otherwise we’re not going to be able to pass it,” he said.

Schumer told The Hill last week that Democrats likely would not be on board with the idea of immigration reform through separate bills and argued that, if the House did not pass immigration reform before August, it will not happen until 2017 or later.

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King said he would need to see the details of any proposal and expressed optimism that, should the GOP take the Senate, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley would likely be the next chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. King said if that were the case, he “would get more sleep at night” and that he believed such an effort “would look dramatically different than the one that came out of the Senate.”

King argued, however, that while lawmakers should have the debate, any new immigration legislation should be saved for another president’s desk.

“My counsel would be let’s have the debate, let's set the groundwork, let’s get to an American consensus, let’s put it on the desk of the next president, because this one has decried his own oath of office,” King said.

“This president will not enforce any law he does not like,” he added. “Plus, you put it on his desk, he’ll veto it, so why make a deal with him? If you make a deal with him you get a bill on his desk that he will sign, he will enforce the parts of the bill he likes; he’ll not enforce the parts he doesn’t like. That’s what he’s doing now.”

Indeed, Tuesday House Speaker Boehner, who has reportedly said he is “hell-bent” on passing immigration reform this year, did not point to the Democratically controlled Senate as the reason the House has not moved forward with immigration reform to date. He pointed to President Obama.

“We’ve talked about this literally every week for the last 18 months, and I think it's clear over the last several months that until the president gives us some reason, some confidence that we can trust him to implement an immigration reform bill, we’re really not going to have much to talk about,” Boehner said. "The ball is in the president’s court.” Read more about Immigration May Come Back With a Vengeance in 2015

NOTE: While we can give a sigh of relief for now, we must not let our guard down - for even a moment.  We know that Congress is  likely plotting and planning something for the lame duck session!

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republican leaders intervened Friday to prevent a vote on U.S. immigration legislation, dealing a severe blow to election-year efforts to overhaul the widely denigrated system.

Rep. Jeff Denham labeled his bill the ENLIST Act and said he would seek a vote as an amendment to the popular annual defense bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.

In response, Doug Heye, spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, said: "No proposed ENLIST amendments to NDAA will be made in order."

Heye said no stand-alone vote on the measure would be permitted, either.

It was the latest setback for President Barack Obama's efforts to move comprehensive immigration legislation through Congress to boost border security, remake legal worker programs and offer legal status to the estimated 11.5 million people now living here illegally. The Senate passed an immigration bill last year, but it's been stalled in the Republican-led House.

Friday's developments seemed to all but rule out anything happening on the issue this year in the House, if even Denham's limited measure could not advance. Despite a wide coalition of business, labor, religious groups, farmers and others pushing for an immigration overhaul, many individual Republican House members who represent largely white districts have been unmoved.

Cantor, House Speaker John Boehner and other House Republican leaders have insisted they want to advance immigration legislation, though they've rejected the Senate's comprehensive bill. Chances have always looked slim, but the White House and outside advocates saw a window for action over the next several months, before Congress' August recess and November midterm elections.

Denham's measure was widely popular and seen as perhaps the likeliest area for compromise.

But in recent weeks prominent conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation, announced their opposition. Heritage Action, the group's political arm, announced it would include the vote in its ratings on lawmakers and called Denham's legislation "deplorable."

Cantor himself faces a primary election challenge in the state of Virginia June 10 from a tea party opponent who has criticized the majority leader for not being conservative enough and accused him of supporting amnesty for immigrants living here illegally.

Dave Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, is a long-shot to unseat Cantor, but his campaign has won attention and support from conservative leaders such as radio host Laura Ingraham, partly because of his attacks against Cantor over immigration.

Denham's office had no immediate reaction to Cantor's announcement. But in an interview beforehand, Denham, who has a competitive race in his heavily Latino district in central California, said he would keep pushing his legislation regardless of what leadership did.

"I am prepared for a long-term fight on this," he said.

Denham's bill would allow immigrants who were brought to this country on or before Dec. 31, 2011, and were younger than 15 years old to become legal, permanent residents — the first step toward citizenship — through honorable service in the military.

It was co-sponsored by 50 House members, 26 Democrats and 24 Republicans, but an outspoken minority was opposed. Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican, had warned that "all hell will break loose" if Denham tried to promote the measure.

The Senate could still revive the issue if the Senate Armed Services Committee includes the ENLIST Act in its own version of the defense policy bill, something Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat, the panel chairman, has indicated was possible. Read more about Republican leaders to block US immigration measure

(Washington, D.C. April 23, 2014) As the Obama administration edges closer to unilaterally halting all enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is staging an elaborate effort designed to create the illusion of public support for this sweeping and unconstitutional exercise of executive authority, charged the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

On Tuesday, Secretary Jeh Johnson met with two dozen immigration policy "stakeholders," all of whom have been part of a campaign to pressure the Obama administration to halt deportations of illegal aliens and implement a de facto amnesty under the guise of prosecutorial discretion. The 24 individuals who met with Johnson represented illegal alien advocacy groups, cheap labor lobbyists, and other outspoken opponents of immigration enforcement.

Since President Obama ordered DHS to review its deportation practices in March, Secretary Johnson has held numerous meetings with political and business advocates for amnesty, but has yet to meet with individuals or organizations representing the interests of the American people.

"The most important stakeholders in U.S. immigration policy are the American people, not the people who break our laws, and not the business interests that want greater access to low-wage foreign labor," declared Dan Stein, president of FAIR. "Yet, for the past five and half years, the Obama administration has consistently refused to acknowledge the interests of struggling American workers and taxpayers who are adversely affected by excessive levels of immigration and lax enforcement.

"While the Secretary’s door is wide open to illegal aliens and their advocates, it has been slammed shut on those who advocate enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the public interest. These include the unions representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) personnel, sheriffs, and pro-enforcement advocacy groups," Stein said.

"No amount of staged meetings with narrow political interests and business lobbyists can alter the fact that President Obama has no constitutional authority to implement the policies these so-called stakeholders demand, as the president himself has conceded. Nor do these staged events obscure the fact that the voices of the true stakeholders in U.S. immigration policy — the American people — are being systematically excluded by a rogue administration determined to pursue its political goals at all costs," Stein concluded. Read more about DHS Stages Meeting with So-Called Immigration Stakeholders

Call it the Jeb Bush, establishment-Republican variation on “they are just looking for a better life” cliché. And let’s just call him “Jeb.”

Apparently American families – of all descriptions – are not a priority for Jeb when it comes to the politics of dutifully providing the business bosses with “cheap” labor. (D.A. King)

In what should be the last words of a viable presidential campaign probe, Jeb defends the victims of borders who illegally enter the remnants of the Republic and take American jobs with the unforgettable words "yes, they broke the law, but it's not a felony. It's an act of love, it's an act of commitment to your family.”

Is Jeb saying that anyone in the world with a commitment to their family should be allowed to live and work in the U.S. as long as they don't plan on felonious activity? If so, it could get very crowded. We already take in more than a million legal job-seekers every year.

Not many Americans should have much trouble closing their eyes and imagining Jeb’s mindless, pandering proclamations coming out of the mouth of any screaming SEIU street protestor carrying a “not one more deportation” placard.

If not a careful explanation of why Marco Rubio took a painful – and likely permanent – nosedive in the presidential polls, somebody may want to forward the current unemployment numbers to the Bush compound. And maybe send along the United States Code regarding identity fraud and theft of Social Security numbers. Or the fact that coming back to the USA after deportation is a felony.

Jeb floated his “so be it” ramblings while at least 20 million Americans who are committed to their families are out of work or underemployed. The day after Jeb’s remarks, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a bill to again extend unemployment payments for Americans who have been out of work for at least six months.

Apparently American families – of all descriptions – are not a priority for Jeb when it comes to the politics of dutifully providing the business bosses with “cheap” labor.

Call it an exploratory expedition. In publicly supporting the 2013 Gang of Eight amnesty/immigration expansion scam that will never see the president’s desk and putting forth his Chuck Schumer-esqe “it’s an act of love” notion, Jeb set out to gauge the progress of the tireless propaganda work of the amnesty-again coalition. Somebody had to venture out to see if Big Business, Big Religion, “Big Raza”, many in Big Media, the Democrats and the Republican establishment bosses have convinced the GOP’s conservative base that it is time for another amnesty. “Do you believe us yet?” they wonder, “this time, we are really going to secure the borders. But later. Trust us.”

It was big of Jeb to allude to “the rule of law” in his remarks. And to the possibility that the 40 percent or so of the illegal aliens present in the U.S. who are visa overstayers may be “politely” asked to leave. What next, a Jeb suggestion that the “secure the homeland” laws put in place after 9/11 requiring biometric monitoring of temporary visa holder’s departures actually be funded and politely enforced?

Many Americans who love their families suspect that if there were any real intent to secure American borders and enforce our immigration laws, it would have begun on September 12, 2001.

Using information recently released by DHS, Jessica Vaughan at the Center for Immigration Studies notes “ICE released 68,000 criminal aliens in 2013, or 35 percent of the criminal aliens encountered by officers. The vast majority of these releases occurred because of the Obama administration’s prosecutorial discretion policies.”

“The preponderance of the evidence demonstrates that immigration enforcement in America has collapsed. Even those with criminal convictions are being released. DHS is a department in crisis” says Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

One can only imagine a Jeb-run immigration enforcement apparatus.

Somebody tell Jeb: According to news reports, in an annual report released this month, "One Nation Underemployed: Jobs Rebuild America," the National Urban League noted that the underemployment rate for African-American workers was 20.5 percent, 18.4 percent for Hispanic workers and 11.8 percent for white workers.

"Many Americans are being left behind, and that includes African-Americans and Latinos who are being disproportionately left behind by the job creation that we see," National Urban League President Marc Morial said. We won’t hear it from the “party-of-the-working man” Democrats, but another amnesty and doubling immigration is not the solution to this shameful crisis.

Neither is Jeb.

Republicans with a commitment to inclusion and victory should keep looking for a presidential candidate. As an act of love.

D.A. King is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which works to control immigration . He is not a member of any political party. Read more about On Jeb’s 'Act Of Love': Republicans Should Keep Looking For A Presidential Candidate