Some Current Trends In Immigration

Border Impossible To Secure, Experts Says. Fox News Latino reports on the contradictions and sloganeering among the GOP presidential candidates.

Bachmann On Immigration: Deport All The Undocumented. Speaking of sloganeering, according to the Huffington Post, Michelle Bachmann said Saturday on a conservative forum hosted by Mike Huckabee that as President she would make sure that all undocumented immigrants would be deported.

Unemployment Leading to California Exodus.  CBS news reports that “according to a new study, the sluggish U.S. economy has sharply reduced illegal immigration from Mexico. From a high of 1,600,000 arrests in 2000, the Border Patrol last year arrested 327,000 – a low not seen since the early 1970s.”

Fuentes proposes help for immigrants. Meanwhile, California Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, D-Sylmar, has a proposed a ballot initiative that would, according to the Contra Costa Times, have “undocumented workers would pay state income taxes in exchange for the prospect of leniency on federal immigration laws…” The law, according to Fuentes, would add up to $325 million a year to the state’s treasury.

Expert: Southeast immigration on the upswing, still behind West. Meanwhile, the opposite seems to be true about the Southeast part of the country. Knoxnews.com says “Tennessee and neighboring Southern states are likely to continue seeing an uptick in immigration, but a local expert cautions that despite recent reports, the region is still nowhere close to matching the boom in California.”

Economists: Job effects of Alabama immigration law unclear. The Southeast, though, is still a place where anti-immigrant fervor is rampant. But while the effects of this fervor are being felt on the farms and fields where there isn’t enough agriculture labor to harvest crops, there are some experts who are taking a wait-and-see attitude. The Gasden Times reports “it may take years and extensive research to determine whether Alabama’s new law clamping down on illegal immigration helps or hurts the state’s job market.”

Alabama to stop immigration checks for government transactions, but fed help may be months away. So, as Al.com reports,  while they’re waiting for their economists to get their studies straight, the state’s Attorney General, Luther Strange, is telling “government officials across the state to stop requiring people to demonstrate U.S. citizenship or lawful immigration status during transactions for things like car tags.” The problem is that, according to the Alabama immigration law, cities must establish a relationship with the federal government’s SAVE program, but so far only one city has done so.