illegal immigration

House Republican leaders are giving their support to a limited path to legal status for some illegal immigrants, in a move Democrats said could open the door to a deal on comprehensive immigration legislation.

Instead, it said immigrants living here illegally could remain and live legally if they pass background checks, pay fines and back taxes, learn to speak English and understand U.S. civics, and can support themselves without access to welfare.

But GOP leaders made clear that border security must be improved first.

"None of this can happen before specific enforcement triggers have been implemented," the document said.

Nevertheless, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a big advocate for immigrant legislation on the Senate side, said the announcement could smooth the way for a deal on legislation. The Senate passed an immigration bill last year.

"While these standards are certainly not everything we would agree with, they leave a real possibility that Democrats and Republicans, in both the House and Senate, can in some way come together and pass immigration reform that both sides can accept. It is a long, hard road but the door is open," he said. Read more about House GOP leaders back limited path to legal status for illegal immigrants

Several prominent amnesty advocates, including Mark Zuckerberg and top Obama administration officials, have argued that amnesty is a civil right. The claim is, of course, preposterous...

To say that amnesty is a civil right is to effectively declare to the world the right to enter the United States without permission, to bring one’s family, and to receive all of the financial benefits our nation provides. To say that one has a right to freely violate our immigration laws is to deny the very idea that a nation can establish enforceable borders.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s motivation is not elusive. He heads a lobbying group representing many of his industry’s wealthiest CEOs, and their companies wish to extract generous guest-worker programs from Congress....

The upside-down conception of rights increasingly articulated by amnesty activists would mean that when an illegal worker seeks a job sought or held by an American worker, the civil-rights equity is on the side of the illegal worker...

Republican officials reflexively collapse into a defensive posture, offering assurances that they will pass undefined “immigration reform” because we need to “fix our nation’s broken immigration system.” But does doubling the annual flow of immigrant workers fix a broken system, or make it dramatically worse? Is our goal just to do “something,” or to do the right thing?

— Jeff Sessions is the junior United States senator from Alabama and the ranking Republican member on the Senate Budget Committee. Read more about Crowding Out U.S. Workers

In its first four years the Obama administration deported 3.2 million aliens, averaging just over 800,000 per year. Pro-amnesty advocacy groups, administration officials, lawmakers, and lazy reporters all have claimed this is a record, but it is not. In fact, according to historical DHS statistics, this is the lowest total and annual average since the mid-1970s.

Bloomberg News reporter Bill Selway wrote this last week:

The ordinances come as Obama's administration has faced pressure from Democratic lawmakers and Hispanic backers to scale back deportations, which hit a record 409,900 in the 2012 budget year. During his five years in office, the Obama administration has sent 1.93 million people back to their home countries, close to what President George W. Bush did in eight years and nearly as many as in the 108 years before Bush took office.

The statistic in the first sentence refers to the number of deportations claimed by ICE for 2012, not total deportations. In order to achieve this "record," ICE juiced its numbers by counting certain Border Patrol cases as ICE removals, which had not been done in prior years. (Border Patrol deportations are usually counted as "returns".) So ICE's deportation record under the Obama administration is about as valid as Barry Bonds' home run record.

Because the Obama administration has blurred the lines of which agencies can take credit for deportations, the only fair way to assess their performance is to count all deportations done by all the DHS agencies. These are reported every year in the DHS Yearbook of Immigration Statistics in Table 39, which shows the number of "removals" and "returns" by all immigration enforcement agencies going back to 1927.

There we find that the total number of aliens "sent back" under first four years of the Obama administration is just over 3.2 million (not 1.93 million, as Selway wrote). This is an annual average of just over 800,000 sent back per year. Official numbers for 2013 have not been released yet, but the total will be about the same, with just over 400,000 Border patrol deportations and about 370,000 attributed to ICE.

That is nowhere near the totals under George Bush's administration, which were over 10.3 million total deportations with an annual average of 1.2 million (see the table below).

The real record for deportations belongs to the Clinton administration. Obama's total is lower than the last six administrations, even lower than Jimmy Carter's.

Sure, illegal border crossings, which generate the lion's share of all deportations, have slowed some during the Obama administration, and that's one reason why the Border Patrol is deporting fewer aliens, but the plain fact remains that the Obama administration has not deported more people than any recent previous administration – not even close. The other reason the Obama deportation numbers are low is because interior enforcement has been nearly dismantled due to executive-decree amnesties and so-called "prosecutorial discretion," which shields at least 90 percent of the illegal population from enforcement.

The most egregious reporting malpractice in Selway's article is the absurd claim that Obama's deportation numbers are "nearly as many as in the 108 years before Bush took office."

I expect the pro-amnesty advocacy groups to keep spouting bogus statistics to support their outrageous demands for an end to all deportations, but there's no excuse for reporters at national news organizations to keep accepting it at face value. Read more about Obama Deportations Definitely Not Record-Breaking

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi privately has urged the Obama administration to halt deportations for some illegal immigrants...

In an interview with Telemundo over the weekend, Mrs. Pelosi said that just being in the country illegally is not enough of a reason to be deported, and she said illegal immigrants must have something more serious on their records.

“Our view of the law is that it — if somebody is here without sufficient documentation, that is not reason for deportation,” she said in the interview... “If somebody has broken the law, committed a felony or something, that’s a different story.”

Federal law generally does say that those who are in the country without authorization — either because they jumped the border or have overstayed their visas — are deportable.

But Mr. Obama has claimed broad discretion to decide whom to deport out of the 11 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the country, arguing that Congress only appropriated enough money to deport about 400,000 people a year and so he must pick and choose whom to deport.

Homeland Security officials argue that nearly all of those they deport do meet one of their priority categories of having a criminal record or having previously been deported and returned to the U.S. in violation of that removal.

In her interview with Telemundo, Mrs. Pelosi said she disputes that, saying she’s appeared alongside some of those she said shouldn’t have been deported.

...Still, Mrs. Pelosi said she is not sure whether Mr. Obama has the authority to grant a broad suspension of deportations for parents of so-called Dreamers, the illegal immigrants whom the president already carved out of danger of deportation in an executive action last year.

“I don’t know whether he has the authority,” Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said. “But I think that there is discretion in the law as to the implementation, enforcement of the legislation that is calling for these deportations.” Read more about Pelosi calls for Obama to halt deportations