Illegals Today

Manhattan Institute's Civic Bulletin #50 concerns immigrant integration and assimilation.

"If you look at Census data regarding the number of people who are here both as lawful permanent residents and people who are unauthorized, we need to provide several billion new hours of English- language instruction over the next seven years. To learn English it requires somewhere between 300 to 600 hours per person, depending on the profile of person you’re talking about. On the left, you have proposals that represent what I call the “fire hose” approach. They say, “Let’s throw a few hundred million dollars a year at this problem.” The left basically makes this money a giveaway of formula grants to states, so that just by having a body that needs to learn English in your state you get money. The right makes proposals for things like a $500 fee that the immigrant would pay, and then that becomes a voucher to go look for classes. You can imagine how little someone will get with $500."

Labels: English

Byline: The Daily Record Staff via Access My Library

"A new book on the explosion of immigrants in suburban communities, "Twenty-First Century Gateways," released Monday [Mar 17] by the Brookings Institution, shows that one in five residents in the Washington area is now foreign born. Mary Price, co-author of the section on the Washington region and chairwoman of George Washington University's geography department, says the area has recently become a hub for immigrants from a wide variety of cultures. There are now more than 1 million immigrants in the area -- four times the amount in 1980. Montgomery County in Maryland and Virginia's Fairfax County are leading the region's demographic change."

Brookings Institution blurb about the book here.

Labels: Brookings Institution, Maryland, Virginia, Washington DC

What surprised me about this story on bills being introduced in the state legislature in the Washington Post on March 25 is that the journalists actually used the term illegal immigrants.

"Public anger against illegal immigrants, already entrenched in parts of Northern Virginia, is seeping into Maryland. With legislators facing unprecedented demands to take action, fears of a crackdown are spreading among illegal immigrants in a state that has been more tolerant of them."

The Democrats control things in MD, so the bills probably won't get anywhere, but they are a reflection of the growing concern.

"Activists against illegal immigration said the legislature is out of touch with public frustration and concern. During hearings in the past two weeks, residents have testified that illegal immigrants are inundating schools, hospitals and suburban neighborhoods and warned that they might bring disease and terrorism."

Labels: Maryland

Abstract: The Senate's immigration reform bill's DREAM Act repeals federal law that prohibits any state from offering in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens unless the state also offers in-state tuition rates to all U.S. citizens. The DREAM Act would retroactively change federal law to pardon ten states which have enacted laws in violation of that policy. This Backgrounder argues that allowing in-state tuition for illegal aliens encourages the violation of federal immigration law and is unfair to legal aliens and out-of state U.S. citizens. It shows how the DREAM Act would create another type of amnesty for illegal aliens who entered the country before the age of 16 and concludes that the Rule of Law can be fully restored only if all levels of government are working to uphold it. Read the article here.

"The Senate Immigration Bill Rewards Lawbreaking: Why the Dream Act is a Nightmare"
KRIS W. KOBACH, University of Missouri at Kansas City - School of Law, Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, No. 1960, August 14, 2006.

Labels: Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, Dream Act