Free Republic

Statement on Immigration Research (Update: On Tuesday, May 16, the Senate passed Sen. Jeff Bingaman's (D-NM) amendment to S. 2611 that significantly reduced the number of legal immigrants who could enter under the bill's "guest worker" program. As a result of this change, our estimate of the number of legal immigrants who would enter the country or would gain legal status under S. 2611 falls from 103 million to around 66 million over the next 20 years.) If enacted, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611) would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years, allowing an...

Medicare and Social Security will become insolvent sooner than estimated earlier, Medicare's trustees said in their annual report, issued May 1. Mexico has a presidential election on July 2. The leading candidates are Felipe Calderon, a conservative, and Andres Lopez Obrador, a leftist who has the backing of Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. What does this have to do with President Bush's plan for comprehensive immigration reform? Maybe lots. Medicare and Social Security are going broke chiefly because there aren't enough workers paying into the systems to support beneficiaries. Unless millions of new workers can be...

Now we know what George Bush really thinks of his immigration-restricting conservative base: They're bunch of dumb, hysterical, soulless racists. Maybe that's bit overstated, but if so, not by much. At his White House news conference last week, alongside Australia's John Howard, Bush said quite a lot, revealing much about his mind-set. He thinks he can fool his fellow citizens, enough of them at least, by using a few focus-grouped buzzwords. As for those recalcitrant types who aren't gulled -- well, he figures he can cow them into submission with loaded smear words. Bush answered that he wanted a "comprehensive...