Immigration Policy Changes to Prevent Deportations

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement department issued new policies that aim to stop deportation hearings on any illegal with a legal US relative. The policy would not apply to illegals convicted of a crime or involving things like fraud. It will, however; likely prevent a significant number of the nearly 17,000 cases pending from resulting in a deportation. This is basically a pass that lets anyone that is related to a legal US resident enter the US illegally without fear of deportation. They basically get rewarded for violating our laws. If they have relatives here then let those relatives sponsor them to enter the nation legally.

AZ Immigration

A federal court granted an injunction blocking the enactment of several key provisions of the AZ immigration law that was recently passed. The same judge also denied a request by AZ to have their appeal hearing date moved up. The push from the left to kill this law has so far failed, but it has certainly delayed it's taking effect and removed some of the teeth from the bill. Unfortunately for the Democrats supporting the efforts to block the law it is extremely popular in AZ leading to protests following the ruling. It's also relatively popular with the general national public and this injunction may be just one more reason the Democrats will struggle in November. At least that is a positive.

Mexico Allowed to Submit Brief on AZ Immigration Law

A federal judge ruled that Mexico's brief can be considered in the law suit pending against AZ's new immigration law. This is insane...AZ is a state in the United States of America not Mexico, the court case is filed in U.S. Federal Court not Mexico...allowing Mexico to have a say on U.S. law regarding illegal immigration from Mexico into the U.S. is ludicrous. Mexico has no right nor legal standing to be able to voice it's opinion about our laws in our courts! Mexico has tacitly allowed and supported the flow of illegals into the U.S. in violation of our territorial sovereignty.  This is nuts!

Immigration Debate - You gotta hear this

I don't think anyone could have said it better! Watch it now.

FOXNews.com - Top Official Says Feds May Not Process Illegals Referred From Arizona

The Arizona immigration law is definitely getting lots of media attention (though if you look at the percentage of Americans that believe it is the right thing to do you could hardly call it divisive). Apparently though Homeland Security's ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is now saying they will not necessarily enforce the law by accepting people arrested under this Arizona law.

The whole point behind the Arizona law is that illegal immigration is costing the state a huge amount of money and the federal government is policing the immigration laws very poorly (read "basically not at all"). Now the federal agency charged with enforcing this law is saying they won't do anything even if the state does all the investigation and hands the illegals over to them. This is nuts! Only in government would you be able to get away with that kind of attitude and still have a job. We need to change the leadership of this nation to get idiots like the ones running ICE out of there. What they heck is the point of a law that will not be enforced?

The Cost of Federal Incompetence

The federal government is charged with enforcing immigration laws, but apparently they are so bad at it that taxpayers have to pay up....

Health Care

The health care debate rages on! It is all but certain that some kind of legislation will pass, but some of the more irksome proposals may not make the final cut. Pulling the government run option seems to be gaining momentum as our senators and representatives struggle to deal with the negative public opinion. The town hall meetings are turning violent in some cases and unruly in most as citizens are voicing their disapproval of such measures. Fox News ran an article not too long ago about violence at a town hall meeting in Florida...check it out.

Interestingly there is some debate in France about the enormous cost of their health care system. The Wall Street Journal ran an article about it not long ago. The article describes how France has struggled to keep up its standard of care as costs have risen. The problem is that the government cannot pay for it, but citizens now expect it as a right along with freedom of speech or religion. The result has been reduced services and locations leading to even longer lines and angry people. The whole article is available here.

One item that no one wants to touch is the impact of illegal immigrants on health care costs. There are lots of studies that show that illegal immigrants almost exclusively use emergency rooms for basic care, because under a 1980s law they cannot be refused treatment even if they cannot pay. This is driving up health care costs nation-wide. The political nightmare that is immigration has basically assured that not only will we pass some version of this monstrosity but will almost certainly not address one of the major drivers of health care costs - illegal immigrants.

It's hard to say for sure what will come out of all of this debate, but one thing is certain if we pass a bill anything close to what is sitting in Congress now it will cost trillions and our children and grandchildren will have to clean it up when the house of cards comes crashing down.