I am starting to wonder if the SB1070 and all the commotion and attention it has stirred up isn’t turning out to be one of the most heated American civil rights controversy since...

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 Immigration reform, with all the attention it has received in the media limelight lately, has likely been the cause of shaping some rather unexpected relationships. Recently, a number of evangelical Christian leaders of notable influence have expressed...

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        Tuesday, July 20, 2010 a panel discussion titled “Beyond Border Security: Combating Mexico’s Violent Drug Cartels” was held on Capitol Hill to address the issues of border violence and arms trafficking into Mexico. Third Way, a think tank claiming to be the “leading moderate voice of the progressive movement”, hosted the event where Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s ambassador...

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        No doubt, Arizona’s SB1070 law has kindled much controversy having a clearly polarizing effect. However it seems that the controversy, rather than becoming buried with time, has had the effect of bringing the national immigration issue to the forefront of people’s minds and only increased a sense of urgency to address it appropriately and comprehensively. This would explain the flood of pro-active measures by opponents of the law...

        The sports world has not been immune to the onslaught of diverse and numerous boycotts that the law has instigated. In this case, it is the MLB (Major League Baseball) that has found itself in the crossfire of politics...

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Beyond helping undocumented students gain access to higher education and providing a pathway to financial resources, the Dream Act is an advantage to us all.

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 At least this is what we were taught to believe—that the Constitution assures central authority through preemption, that is, through federal law’s power to trump state statutes.

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While most Americans spent the last weekend preparing for festivities and celebration of the July 4^th holiday, enjoying the costly freedom our forefathers so graciously passed down to us, our neighbors south of the border were unfortunately not able to share in the same spirits of festivity. Rather, caught in the wake of tragedy, they found themselves dealing with the calamity of an untimely natural disaster of historic proportions.

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 Sunday’s state elections went ahead without any mejor incidents as the PRI took over three states and maintained its seat in at least six others.

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This morning at American University, President Obama spoke on his will to move forward with Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

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A colleague forwarded me an interesting article from the Brownsville Herald that asked a question I’ve being secretly dying to know: what is border security, really?

The U.S. Mexico Border is the most secure it has ever been, with taxpayer-funded fences, more security personnel, and new technology. But "despite those efforts, calls for increased border security are elbowing out cries for an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws and inducing Congress and the administration to spend even more money on border enforcement."

That’s a big, big problem. Because while Democrats, Republicans, and just about everyone else agrees that border security is critical, there is no real quantifiable definition of what that means and how much it will cost to get there. The article speculates what "securing the border" may really mean.

"Is it when the entire southern border of nearly 2,000 miles is fenced, or double-fenced? Is it when illegal immigration arrests are at zero or close to it? Is it when everyone who crosses the border can be identified? Is it when Army troops are sent to the border, as they were after Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa raided a New Mexico border town in 1916, or when the number of Border Patrol agents has quintupled?"

Ironically, this article was released on the same day that Homeland Security Janet Napolitano spoke on the topic of border security. Her remarks, given at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, centered around the Department’s ongoing efforts and new efforts "to bolster security along the Southwest border."

Her full remarks are on the Homeland Security web site:

As interesting as this all sounds, aren’t we forgetting something? We need Comprehensive Immigration Reform that treats border security as only part of the solution, not THE solution.

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