Immigration

Here we go again. Someone somewhere is playing the victim card, and the Rev. Al Sharpton is there to somehow pretend he’s a victim too. The latest country-trotting for Sharpton involves a trip to sunny Arizona to feign utter outrage over the state’s enactment of tough new immigration laws.

I’m not here to argue the merits of the state law. Even the Arizona Legislature just last week had to tweak the measure to ensure it was doing what lawmakers intended without violating constitutional rights. But Al Sharpton? Again? Didn’t I see him at the local Dairy Queen last week? And just before that, on HBO with Bill Maher?

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The Hill's A.B. Stoddard asks Democrats for their opinion of the Obama administration's handling of issues like immigration, financial regulatory reform and the Gulf oil spill.

The new law in Arizona should be seen less through the prism of politics or constitutional law and more through the lens of national psychology. It really is a cri de coeur, or a cry from the heart.

The law may seem punitive or intrusive from the ACLU’s perspective. But as I have said before, desperate times require desperate measures.

You only need to glance over the border and see the situation that is unfolding in Mexico to understand that the people of Arizona are panicking that the drug war, like a swarm of killer bees, is coming to a location near them.

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The Hill's A.B. Stoddard looks into whether the Obama administration could take up the issue of tax reform once the Senate moves on to immigration, an issue that will most likely split the two parties even more than financial reform.

Under the new Arizona immigration law, if the same conduct is done by whites and Hispanics, the whites will never be stopped and asked for their papers, and the Hispanics very often will be. This law should be thrown out by the courts and pre-empted by national legislation. It guarantees abuses that are an outrage to our nation. It will awaken the sleeping giant of the Hispanic vote that will be politically transforming and powerfully helpful to Democrats.

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The Mexican drug war has spilled out over the border in the Southwest and has helped precipitate the new immigration law that just was signed into law in Arizona.

Washington activists can cry out about the unfairness of the law all they want, but until the president and his administration take seriously the threat posed by the Mexican drug gangs, the people of Arizona will have no choice but to take extreme measures.

Seventy percent of the people of Arizona support the law that was just enacted. That tells you something right there.

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California’s immigration story is a bittersweet, heart-palpitating tale incapable of arriving upon any hard-line conclusions. An example of this is that on the one hand, immigrants from India and China are upholding Silicon Valley as our American children refuse to embrace the math and sciences — in essence, they are keeping America competitive. While on the other hand, illegal immigrants weigh an enormous economic burden on states services such as: hospital care, education and prison systems.

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I met the international jazz great Pacquito di Rivera at a concert in Washington last year. I asked him if he lived in Miami, where I do half the year (Key Biscayne, minutes outside Miami). No, he said, he lives in North Bergen, N.J. I was stunned: The famous Cuban refugee lives walking distance from where I grew up in the 1930s and ’40s.

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President Obama's national healthcare bill mandates that employers must provide health coverage to all employees. This proposal would seemingly include coverage for tens of millions of illegal immigrants.

This is an outrage. There are close to 60 million illegal immigrants in this country. Effectively forcing Americans to subsidize cradle-to-grave healthcare costs for these people would cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars annually, while further incentivizing illegal immigration.

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Chapel Hill, N.C., is a wonderful place. Situated on a gorgeous campus and one of the finest schools in the land, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is also home to the 2009 NCAA Men's Basketball champions.

It's paradise. You live in one of the best and prettiest college towns in America, your professors challenge you, your sports teams win (and not just men's hoops; the women's soccer program is the nation's best, for example), you count Michael Jordan and Andy Griffith as fellow Tar Heels, the live music scene thrives, your graduation is held in a football stadium and, if you're a North Carolina resident, your in-state tuition is low (which has saved many a North Carolinian from having to say, "Yes, I went to Duke."). Read more...