Parsing Immigration Policy

Nonprofit migrant advocacy organizations near Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala are offering an unusual and controversial psychological therapy to enable migrants to continue on the trail north to the U.S. border. Todd Bensman, the Center’s senior national security fellow, spent a week reporting from Tapachula, Mexico, where he found that at least two UN-funded organizations employ clinical....

EDITOR’S NOTE: Although this podcast was available on our website on January 20th, we failed to publish it on the RSS feed on that date but corrected the mistake as soon as it was known. An April 2021 Harvard-Harris poll showed that 80 percent of voters believe that the border is “a crisis that needs to be addressed immediately” and that 85 percent want stronger borders. The largest state think......

The border crisis was in plain view in September when Americans were stunned by images of thousands of migrant families huddled under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Less dramatic, but no less important, is a 180-mile stretch of border to the west, where New Mexico borders on Mexico, where illegal migrants are more likely to be single males trying to avoid detection. New Mexico Congresswoman Yvette......

Since President Reagan signed into law the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), five presidents have supported legislation containing an amnesty for a large portion of the illegal immigrant population. All of these pieces of legislation traded amnesty for enforcement, except the most recent, the Biden-Menendez immigration bill (U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021). This bill would have... Sour...

View Podcast Archive Center for Immigration Studies’ analysts come together for this year’s final episode of Parsing Immigration Policy to discuss the top immigration stories of 2021 and to predict the biggest immigration stories of 2022. Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and host of the podcast, leads the conversation focusing on three key immigration issues: the border... Source

In fiscal year 2021 the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended more illegal migrants at the Southwest border (nearly 1.7 million) than in any year in history. In this weeks’ Parsing Immigration Policy podcast, Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, speaks out on behalf of the 18,000 Border Patrol agents he represents as head of their union. What are the principal factors driving......

The Center for Immigration Studies hosted a panel discussion exploring the remote area of the Darien Gap, the infamous jungle passage through which extra-continental migrants cross from South America to North America on their way to the United States southern border. International migrants are passing through the gap’s dense rainforest in record numbers. How is it impacting the indigenous people.....

The passage of landmark immigration legislation in 1965 marked the beginning of the largest sustained wave of immigration in America’s history. This immigration surge, however, was not the first. Immigration surged in the decades leading up to the American Civil War and again starting in the 1880s before being curtailed by war and then by restrictive legislation in the 1920s. Source

More than a million migrants entered Europe in 2015 triggering changes in national immigration policies and in public support for the securing of border and the limiting of migration. Fast forward six years, the United States has just set an all-time annual record for the number of illegal migrants apprehended at the Southwest border, with two migrant caravans presently en route. Source

Americans have watched the videos of the migrant caravans comprised of thousands of migrants from all over the world coming to the southern border. Americans have read the numbers – agents apprehended 1,659,206 illegal migrants in FY2021, an all-time record for apprehensions at the southwest border, and tens of thousands of ‘gotaways’ entered the country monthly. But most Americans have never... S...

The U.S.-Mexico relationship has a direct impact on American security and prosperity, and immigration, both legal and illegal, plays a key role. In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Christopher Landau, former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico (2019-2021), discusses Mexican immigration laws, cooperation with the United States, and Mexican attitudes toward migration. Landau touches on the.....

Hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals, primarily from India and China, are working in the United States via the controversial Optical Practical Training program (OPT). This program allows individuals who entered on student visas to obtain work authorization for up to three years after graduation. OPT was not enacted by Congress – the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) developed the program...

One of the most frequently cited justifications for sanctuary policies is the claim that immigrants are less willing to report victimization to authorities. A report was released by the Center for Immigration Studies casts doubt on this claim, using the latest data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and host of Parsing Immigration Policy.....

The National Border Patrol Museum captures the history and mission of the U.S. Border Patrol dating back to the creation of the agency in 1924. Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and host of Parsing Immigration Policy, recently visited the unique museum, located in El Paso, Texas, and spoke with its president. This museum, funded entirely by private donations... Source

The historic surge of illegal immigration at the U.S. border has overwhelmed the U.S. Border Patrol, the agency charged with detecting and preventing illegal traffic between ports of entry. In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and host of the podcast, discusses this with border security expert Dr. Victor Manjarrez Jr. Manjarrez... So...

The Center for Immigration has been following the polling of the immigration issue closely since the election of President Biden. The 2020 presidential campaign was largely devoid of any debate on immigration policy, meaning that very few Americans voted for Joe Biden because of his immigration positions. But polling shows that there has been consistent, and growing, opposition to the Biden... Sou...

Thousands of illegal aliens poured into Del Rio, Texas last week forming an encampment that eventually peaked with an estimated 15,000 migrants. Thousands of mostly Haitians, but also Cubans and other nationalities, waited for processing to enter the country as an overwhelmed Biden administration struggled to control the growing camp, and Texas moved to stop the numbers from going even higher. Sou...

The “public charge” doctrine – meaning that a person likely to have to be supported by taxpayers (a public charge) should not be permitted to immigrate – is one of the oldest elements of American immigration policy. Colonial Massachusetts enacted the earliest public charge law in 1645, while the first immigration law at the federal level, in 1882, likewise excluded immigrants who were likely to......

There is no more important tool for preventing future attacks on U.S. soil than the nation’s immigration system. The 20th anniversary of the attacks that claimed thousands of American lives is an appropriate occasion to reflect on the role immigration failures played in the 9/11 attacks and the progress made in limiting opportunities for future terrorism. Americans may disagree on the level of......

Every year the United States welcomes more than one million legal immigrants; two-thirds of this population are family members brought in through chain migration. With an average immigrant sponsoring 3.45 family members, the U.S. immigration flow is always impacted by chain migration. The thousands of Afghans being resettled in the U.S. will be able to eventually petition for more relatives... Sou...

With the fall of the U.S.-backed government in Kabul, large numbers of Afghans are fleeing the country. In particular, the United States has sought to evacuate those Afghans who would be in danger of Taliban reprisals for their cooperation with American authorities. To discuss this urgent issue, this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy features two analysts at the Center for Immigration.....

Today’s immigration policy debate focuses on many of the same issues as it did decades ago, including numbers, amnesties, labor impact, fiscal costs, and legislative strategy. In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, George Fishman, former Department of Homeland Security Deputy General Counsel and Republican Counsel on the House Immigration Subcommittee for over two decades... Source

Congress passed the “Magna Carta” of environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), more than 50 years ago. NEPA mandates that all federal agencies consider the environmental implications of actions before they are undertaken; the environmental impact statements are then required to be made public, so that individuals have the opportunity to comment on government actions that......

Few politicians have studied United States immigration and immigration policies as comprehensively as the late civil-rights icon, the first African American congresswoman to come from the Deep South, and chairwoman of President Clinton’s Commission on Immigration Reform, U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan (TX). The bi-partisan commission produced guiding principles for American immigration... Sour...

The ever-expanding Central American Minors Refugee/Parole program (CAM), launched in 2014 (and expanded in 2016) by the Obama administration, and terminated in 2017 by the Trump administration, has expanded further under the Biden administration. In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Dr. Nayla Rush, a senior researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, explains how an in... So...