Freedom Line Blog

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

CFIF Contributing Editor Ashton Ellis discusses why critics agree that President Obama is failing to uphold his oath of office, Sarah Palin’s premise that Obama is acting lawlessly with respect to America’s unsecured border crisis, and what, if anything, can and should be done about it.

Listen to the interview here.

Here’s the thing about all that money we spend on immigration enforcement: we don’t know if any of it actually works. From Fox News:

Despite Washington spending billions of taxpayer dollars on efforts to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, two internal government reports reveal there is no clear way of gauging whether any of it is actually working.

Backing up reporting from Fox News earlier this year, the reports from the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service show the Department of Homeland Security lacks an accurate barometer to measure the success of ramped-up efforts to curtail illegal crossings.

Wasteful, inefficient government at work again? Well, not really.

“Apprehensions data are imperfect indicators of illegal flows because they exclude two important groups when it comes to unauthorized migration: aliens who successfully enter and remain in the United States … and aliens who are deterred from entering the United States,” Marc Rosenblum, immigration policy specialist at CRS, wrote in his May report. “Thus, analysts do not know if a decline in apprehensions is an indicator of successful enforcement, because fewer people are attempting to enter, or of enforcement failures, because more of them are succeeding.”

The report said recent drops in illegal immigration can likely be attributed to a combination of enforcement and the economic downturn in the U.S., “though the precise share of the decline attributable to enforcement is unknown.”

In other words, to borrow from Donald Rumsfeld, we’re dealing with a “known unknown.” That is, by definition, the only data we have is on people that we’ve stopped. The ones who get through obviously don’t get counted. So we known the numerator with no idea as to the size of the denominator.

There isn’t really a policy fix to this problem. Stepping up enforcement may reduce the number of illegals that get through, but we’ll never be able to do more than make rough estimates as to how much of the overall attempted inflow they represent.

Thus, the lesson here isn’t so much that you can’t trust government to do it’s job (though you can generally take that as a given); It’s that you should take any claims about dramatic successes in securing the border with about 10,000 grains of salt. The statistics always look good when you get to record all your successes without reference to your failures.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino makes the case for why any serious immigration reform must put our national interests first, including and starting with securing the border.

At least they gave him a chance.  Only after watching U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s defiant responses to congressional interrogators did the parents of the late Brian Terry say that Holder needs to go.

Both parents want Holder to resign, citing his response to a question from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who asked if Holder thought it was his responsibility to have known about Operation Fast and Furious.

“There are 115,000 employees in the Department of Justice,” Holder said. “I cannot be expected to know the details of every operation on a day-to-day basis.”

To which Kent said: “Holder says he has 115,000 employees. That is his job. If he can’t handle his job, he should get out of it.”

Indeed.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

A new Rasmussen Reports poll of likely voters finds that less than half of Democrats favor an immigration policy that prohibits national security threats, criminals and welfare seekers from entering America.  By contrast, Republicans support this kind of welcoming policy toward every other kind of immigrant by a 3-to-1 margin.  Here’s the data:

But, while Americans want the border secure and a reduction in illegal immigration, most continue to support a welcoming policy of legal immigration.

Fifty-four percent (54%) of voters now agree with an immigration policy that keeps out only national security threats, criminals and those who would come here to live off America’s welfare system. This is down slightly from 58% last April but is generally consistent with findings for several years. Twenty-seven percent (27%) disagree with a policy like that, while another 19% are not sure about it.

It is interesting to note that Democrats are less supportive of a welcoming immigration policy than Republicans and unaffiliated voters. Republicans support such a policy by a 3-to-1 margin and unaffiliated voters by a 2-to-1 margin. Among Democrats, 47% favor a welcoming immigration policy and 36% are opposed.

This is just another example of where Democrats think their interests lie in the immigration debate: lawbreakers and tax-takers.  Heckuva way to build a party.

In taking the Constitution’s oath of office, President Barack Obama solemnly swore to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Does faithfully executing the office to the best of his ability include holding our nation’s border security hostage to “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation?

In a truly stunning revelation recorded on video during an Arizona weekend townhall meeting, Senator Jon Kyl (R -AZ) recounted a one-on-one discussion in which Obama explicitly said that border security is a bargaining chip for comprehensive immigration reform, a.k.a. amnesty.

I met with the President, in the Oval Office, just the two of us – I kicked the rest of the people out…  Here’s what the President said:  ‘The problem is,’ he said, ‘if we secure the border, then you all won’t have a reason to support comprehensive immigration reform.’  In other words, they’re holding it hostage.”

So there you have it.  To Barack Obama, our nation’s border security, and its very territorial integrity, is nothing more than an expedient bargaining chip for his partisan political agenda and expansion of his potential voting bloc.  That admission occurs just as his Department of Justice plans to sue the state of Arizona for passing an illegal alien statute that merely parallels the existing federal statute.

Less than two years into his tenure, it is becoming increasingly clear that Barack Obama isn’t merely incompetent, but dangerous.

Perhaps U.S. Representative Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) should have checked with his constituents before publicly announcing his intention to inflict economic hardship on his own state in response to the immigration enforcement bill recently passed by the Arizona legislature.

According to Rasmussen Reports, “70% of likely voters in Arizona approve of the legislation, while just 23% oppose it.” 

On the issue of amnesty for illegal aliens, for which Grijalva is a strong proponent, “73% of voters in Arizona now say gaining control of the border is more important than legalizing the status of these undocumented workers.” And, “[e]ighty-three percent (83%) of Arizona voters say a candidate’s position on immigration is an important factor in how they will vote, including 51% who say it’s very important.”