Parsing Immigration Policy

This week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy features a discussion of a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies, which reveals that both immigrant and U.S.-born women are having fewer children than they did 15 years ago. Based on data from the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS), collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, the report finds that although immigrant women continue to have somewhat higher fertility rates than their U.S.-born counterparts, the gap is small.

Guest Steven Camarota, the Center's Research Director and co-author of the report, highlights a critical reality: Immigration, while add...

The Center for Immigration Studies hosted a panel discussion examining how immigration is used as a political, economic, and strategic tool by governments, non-state, and sub-state actors worldwide. Whether through mass migration crises, policy-driven border surges, or the manipulation of refugee flows, immigration has become a powerful geopolitical weapon and a means of waging hybrid warfare. Examples have included Cuba’s use of the Mariel boatlift in 1980 or the more recent efforts by Belarus to coordinate illegal immigration to the EU.

This panel explored the concept of immigration warfare – how immigration is leveraged to gain political leverage; influence legi...

Former Czech President Václav Klaus joins the Center for Immigration Studies podcast to discuss migration, national identity, and the importance of the nation-state. An economist and longtime advocate for national sovereignty, President Klaus challenges prevailing European views on immigration, multiculturalism, and the European Union.

Key highlights:
Reconciling free market economics with the necessity of limited immigration and secure borders.Differentiating between individual migration and mass migration.Arguing that low birthrates do not justify increased migration.Explaining mass migration as being demand-driven, caused by politics and social policies.Critiquing labor importation as a policy failure that undermines c...

In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, National Review’s Andy McCarthy and guest host Andrew Arthur, the Center’s fellow in law and policy, examine the erosion of legal norms – from immigration enforcement to judicial power – and what this means for how our system of government is supposed to work under the Constitution.

Prosecutorial Discretion:

McCarthy traces how the Obama and Biden administrations transformed prosecutorial discretion from a tool used on a case-by-case basis into a broad and categorical policy of declining to enforce immigration laws. What was once a resource-based allocation judgment has become...

This week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy discusses the Trump Administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a rarely-used provision in U.S. law passed in 1798 that gives the president the authority to swiftly remove citizens of countries of wartime foes or countries who have made a “predatory incursion” into our territory. Last month, President Trump issued a proclamation invoking the AEA to apprehend, restrain, secure, and remove certain documented members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua (TdA).

Guest host and CIS Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan interviews George Fishman, CIS Senior Legal Fe...

In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy podcast, Center for Immigration Studies analysts discuss the legal and policy implications of the Mahmoud Khalil case.

Khalil, a Palestinian/Syrian/Algerian green card holder, was involved in pro-Hamas protests when a graduate student on a nonimmigrant visa at Columbia University. DHS charged Khalil under Section 237(a)(4)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which renders deportable any noncitizen “whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
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Fieldwork undertaken by the Center for Immigration Studies reveals a border now under control, offering clear evidence that the border crisis was never an unstoppable force but rather the result of policy decisions.

Last week the Center sent analysts to the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector and across the border to Tijuana, and to the El Paso Sector and across the border to Juarez. These two border sectors had some of the heaviest migrant traffic over the last few years, but now the numbers have plummeted.

Center researchers Andrew Arthur and Todd Bensman join Parsing Im...

The latest episode of the Center for Immigration Studies podcast series features a discussion between guest host Marguerite Telford, the Center’s Director of Communications, and Steven Camarota, the Center’s Director of Research. 

Camarota’s interview highlights a recently released analysis that examines the size and growth of the foreign-born population in the January Current Population Survey, the first government survey to be adjusted to better reflect the recent surge in illegal immigrants. The analysis finds that the foreign-born or immigrant population (legal and illegal together) hit 53.3 million and 15.8 percent of the total U.S. population in January 2...

This week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy reminds listeners of the threats that made President Trump's recent Executive Order, "Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats," necessary. The Center for Immigration Studies maintains a comprehensive database detailing examples of preventable federal government vetting failures which resulted in the entry of individuals who posed a threat to national security. Todd Bensman, the Center’s national security fellow, has recently added new cases into the database, highlighting the need for the improvement of U.S. vetting processes. “The Center’s database offers valuable insights...

The latest episode of the Center for Immigration Studies podcast series features guest host Senior National Security Fellow Todd Bensman in conversation with Jaeson Jones, a leading expert on Mexican cartels and a border correspondent.

This timely discussion highlights the recent designation of six Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) by the Trump administration and the multifaceted approach by all levels of government that this permits, allowing the U.S. to combat the cartels in sync with the Mexican government.

Key topics covered include:

Evolution of Mexican Cartels: Exploration of...