• Lawmaker wants to crack down on illegal hiring by state contractors

    The federal E-Verify system, operated by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, screens for undocumented workers by comparing the information that job applicants submit to an employer with records maintained by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. A measure filed Monday in the Texas Senate would beef up punishment for employers that hire undocumented workers and seek to do business with the state.

  • USCIS Green Card issuance problems even worse than initial findings: DHS OIG

    A new DHS OIG reports says that the problems USCIS experienced in properly issuing Green Cards are worse than originally thought. USCIS produced at least 19,000 cards that included incorrect information or were issued in duplicate. Additional mistakes included over 2,400 immigrants approved for 2-year conditional residence status being inadvertently issued cards with 10-year expiration dates. The agency also received over 200,000 reports of cards potentially misdelivered, or not being delivered to approved applicants.

  • Trump’s immigration policy would push legal U.S. workers down the occupational ladder

    U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has proposed deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, and many voters appear to believe that deporting illegal immigrants would boost job opportunities and wages for U.S. workers. But our economic modelling suggests different conclusions. The eight million illegal workers currently in the U.S. workforce contribute to U.S. output. If all the illegal workers left the United States, our modelling found, then the U.S. economy would be 3 percent to 6 percent smaller. A smaller U.S. economy would need fewer workers in all occupations. The exception is farm laborers and construction workers: there would be fewer jobs overall in these occupations, but there would be more jobs for legal U.S. residents. This is because deporting illegal workers would open up vacancies. Moreover, in general terms, eliminating illegal workers from the U.S. workforce would change the structure of employment for legal workers away from skilled occupations towards low-skilled, low-wage occupations.

  • Israel fortifies northern defenses against future Hezbollah attacks

    The Israeli army is bolstering the country’s northern defenses in anticipation of future attacks from the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah. The Israel Defense Forces changed its doctrine towards the terror group following threats by its leader Hassan Nasrallah, who claimed that Hezbollah sought to “enter into the Galilee.”

  • Ending DACA would wipe away at least $433.4 billion from U.S. GDP over a decade

    Amid talk that the incoming administration could make good on a campaign promise to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the Center for American Progress estimates that ending DACA would wipe away at least $433.4 billion from the U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP, cumulatively over a decade.

  • “Alt-right” leader calls on Trump to freeze immigration for fifty years

    One of the leaders of the alt-right movement has called for a 50-year freeze on immigration to the United States, saying the country needs to “take a break” in order to “become a nation again.” Richard Spencer, who coined the term “alt-right” in 2008, spoke at a weekend Washington, D.C. gathering of alt-right followers, saying the proposal was a “fundamental policy” the movement would put forward for the Trump administration to adopt. “America was, until this last generation, a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us,” Spencer said.

  • Most border arrests by Texas troopers are not for drug smuggling

    Officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) have recorded 31,786 law violations along the Texas-Mexico border from late June 2014 through September 2016. Just 6 percent of the offenses were felony drug possession by “high-threat criminals,” or HTC — the criminals troopers were largely sent to stop. The other HTC priority is supposed to be human smugglers, but they made up just 1 percent of offenses. DPS has added more troopers to the border under the assumed objective that they are going after drug and human smugglers — but a close examination shows that most of their arrests are for drunk driving and misdemeanor drug possession.

  • With Trump in D.C., Texas might spend less on border

    With a tight Texas budget session ahead in 2017, state legislators are already looking for every available dollar. Not having to spend $800 million on border security — the amount allocated in the previous two-year budget — would amount to a huge financial windfall at the state Capitol. Not counting federal funds, the Legislature spent about $114 billion in the last budget. If President-Elect Donald Trump delivers on his promise to dramatically beef up security on the U.S.-Mexico border, leading Texas lawmakers say they might quit spending so much state tax money on it.

  • Trump's win spurs surge in private prison stocks

    Shares of private prison companies Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group jumped 48.1 percent and 20.8 percent, respectively, on Wednesday following Tuesday’s victory by Donald Trump in the presidential election. If Trump follows through on his campaign pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, this will be a boon for the private prison industry.

  • Value of Israeli border fencing company’s shares soar in wake of Trump victory

    Magal Security Systems, the Israeli company which built the defensive fence system around the Gaza Strip saw a surge in shares after Donald Trump was confirmed as the winner of Tuesday’s election. Magal had looked with anticipation at the prospect of a Trump victory how it would help the barrier-building business. Magall has built border walls and fences in Egypt, Somalia, and other African countries.

  • Immigrant “dreamers” fear deportation nightmare under Trump

    Of all the people worried about a Donald Trump presidency, few are freaking out more than the young undocumented immigrants who were granted relief from deportation under President Barack Obama’s 2012 executive order. Some undocumented immigrants brought here as kids were granted a sort of legal status by President Barack Obama. They are in a state of shock and panic now that Donald Trump has won the White House.

  • Hungary’s parliament fails to approve government-proposed ban on refugee resettlement

    The Hungarian parliament narrowly defeated a plan proposed by Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister, to ban the resettlement of migrants in Hungary. Analysts say that the setback, coming on the heels of the failure last month of a similar proposal in a referendum, may weaken him as he tries to rally other EU members to adopt a tougher immigration policy.

  • Number of undocumented immigrants in U.S. unchanged over the 2010-2016 period

    The issue of undocumented immigration has been central to the campaign of Donald Trump — and major motivation behind the surge of Hispanic voters supporting Hillary Clinton. The number of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border may be too high than some Americans want, but experts point out that it has not risen in recent years. The numbers of unauthorized immigrant in the United States grew rapidly in the 1990s and early 2000s, but that trend changed with the onset of the financial crisis. The total number of Mexican immigrants in the United States is virtually unchanged over the 2010-2016 period.

  • Counting 11 million undocumented immigrants is easier than you think

    News organizations widely report that there are 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. But where does this figure come from? Donald Trump has falsely asserted: “It could be three million. It could be 30 million. They have no idea what the number is.” In the third debate, Hillary Clinton said, “We have 11 million undocumented people. They [undocumented parents] have 4 million American citizen children. 15 million people.” The confusion is warranted – but demographers have figured out a simple and effective way to estimate the number of unauthorized immigrants.

  • Trump’s wall ignores the economic logic of undocumented immigrant labor

    Donald Trump portrays undocumented immigrants as invading “criminals” supported and abetted by the Mexican government is, and who pose a dire threat to the nation. Trump’s call for building a wall assumes that the cause of undocumented migration originates in Mexico, in the Mexican government, or in the criminal intent of migrants. A border wall makes intuitive sense if you assume the cause of undocumented migration is external to the United States. This is a belief that ignores not only the ease of breaching such a wall, but more fundamentally the economics of low-wage, undocumented labor migration that generated these flows in the first place.