I scanned the results of the latest GOP debate and while it didn't turn up anything earth shattering, it speaks volumes that in the current GOP, Newt Gingrich is the humane voice. I'm not sure if he was ever an anti-imigration partisan, or if he's genuinely not a nice, likeable person. But when he led the Republican house in the 90s, I recall a lot of anit-immigrant sentinement too. In fact, its what finally motivated my family to get our U.S. Citizenship. For additional weirdness, lets create a "red card", which to most non-Americans, means you're getting expelled from a soccer game.

The labor market has to be the overwhelming factor, I have to think.  Another way to reduce illegal immigration would be to make it faster, easier to migrate legally. Despite what anti-immigrantion activists want us to believe, there's no "back-of-the-line" to get your papers, so until we reform that process, people will be forced to take dangerous, risky journeys to come to the States.

Wow!  Arizona politicians are using outright lies and exageration to justify their crackdown on border security.  I'm glad I've never visited Arizona, and at this rate I never will.

I'm hoping that immigration reform happens sooner rather than later.  In the meantime, some positive news about the effects of immigration on the "underclass" was released today by the Cato Institute.

Free Trade Bulletin no. 38: As Immigrants Move In, Americans Move Up | Cato's Center for Trade Policy Studies

This poses an interesting dilemma for people who want to deport unauthorized immigrants to their home countries. Do you break up the families? What happens when they grow up and they can vote? I know in my family, we don't forget the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the early-mid 90s that spurred us to become citizens.

Pew Hispanic Center Publication: A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States

The anti-immigrant sentiment of the mid 90s, as the Republicans were in ascension, motivated our family to stop procrastinating and become U.S. citizens. History is repeating itself again. Number of Mexicans gaining citizenship soars in 2007 - Los Angeles Times

The number of Mexican-born immigrants who became U.S.

Note to self - renew US Passport and carry it everywhere I go. Also, stay out of Maricopa County. Lawman's raids on immigrants spark fury in Phoenix | U.S. | Reuters

Arpaio dispatches teams of sheriff's deputies into Hispanic communities where they stop people and arrest anyone who cannot prove he or she is a legal U.S. resident.

From The Price Tag for Immigration Enforcement, the crackdown on immigrants is only going to get more expensive next year. The Department of Homeland Security is asking for a 19% increase for "immigratin enforcement and border control for 2009". Just this year, the budgets for Customs and Border Protection (CBP)and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were 80% larger than the EPA budget and $4 billion more than the State Department.

The Congressional Budget office released a report on the costs of illegal immigration for state and local governments [HT: Marginal Revolution]  Unfortunately, the report is only available as a PDF file, but its not overyly long, approximately 13 pages in length.  It estmiates the spending by state and local governments due to undocumented immigrants in 3 key ares: Education, Health Care, and Law Enforcement.&nbs

It's a scary thought, and something only a few years ago I thought I'd only read in the Onion, but I just read an article about a US Citizen, born in California, that had been wrongly deported to Mexico.  Think it can't happen to you?   Short of always carrying your Passport, or Citizenship Certficate, if you don't look or sound 'merican, how can you prove your a citizen?