Jim DeMint’s coming out party as head of the Heritage Foundation is not going very well. The conservative think tank’s immigration report – which labels the cost of immigration reform at $6.3 trillion and was co-authored by a white supremacist – has caused a backlash against the group from prominent Republican lawmakers and party donors. [...]

One of the world’s leading wire services, the Associated Press, has announced it will no longer use the term “illegal immigrant.” The term illegal immigrant is considered derogatory by many as referring to a person rather than an act. The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe [...]

In a press conference yesterday President Obama laid out his administration’s position on immigration reform endorsing a bipartisan plan being floated in Congress and laying out his views. First, I believe we need to stay focused on enforcement. That means continuing to strengthen security at our borders. It means cracking down more forcefully on businesses [...]

From The Nation: Erika Andiola works with the Arizona Dream Act Coalition and has been a visible immigrant rights advocate in one of the nation’s most anti-immigrant states. In a phone call today from an ICE office, Andiola explained that ICE agents arrived at her home and asked for her mother, Maria Arreola. When Arreola [...]

California Attorney General Kamala Harris has told law enforcement officials in the nation’s largest state that the Secure Communities program of the Department of Homeland Security is optional. It was Harris’ first public assessment of Secure Communities. Under the program launched in 2008, all arrestees’ fingerprints are sent to immigration officials, who may ask police [...]

Republican Senators introduced an alternative version of the DREAM Act today, and all you need to know about it is that the two sponsors, Jon Kyl and Kay Bailey Hutchison, are retiring. Marco Rubio hasn’t even signed on as a co-sponsor yet. The well-publicized GOP outreach on immigration hasn’t yet surpassed the need to placate [...]

My understanding is that Republicans oppose the DREAM Act because they oppose a path to citizenship for any undocumented immigrant, regardless of their circumstances. They don’t really care if the individual came into the country as a child, brought by their parents, with no recollection of their former country. So I’m puzzled by this attempt [...]

It’s not hard to see why Democrats and the White House plan a second-term push on immigration reform. First of all, the demographic shifts of the electorate demand that they continue to extract a price from Republicans for their antipathy to Hispanics. Second, for the same demographic reasons, the prospect of up to 12 million [...]

Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham have restarted talks on a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

The real hope for bipartisanship in the next Congress, at least in the afterglow of the election, is on the issue of immigration. It really wasn’t so long ago that large sections of the Republican Party, on up to their sitting President, favored the policy. Right-wing talk radio and the proto-Tea Party basically defeated it. [...]

It’s just a few days out from a national election, the spotlight is more closely affixed on Washington, and everyone is on their best behavior. That’s the best reading of several comments made over the last 48 hours, designed to get the media to believe that we’ve entered a new era of bipartisanship, and more [...]