This week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy features Steve Robinson, editor-in-chief of the Maine Wire, a digital investigative news outlet, who joins our guest host, Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. The two experts discuss how Chinese criminal organizations have established illegal weed grows using trafficked labor of illegal aliens, and the effect on Maine communities. Robinson has been investigating this problem for months, since the existence of hundreds of rural Maine properties was revealed in a leaked federal law enforcement memo ..read more

In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Todd Bensman, the Center’s senior national security fellow, joins us live from Juarez, Mexico. Bensman takes us into La Linea Cartel territory, where he is investigating the smuggling of dangerous criminals into the United States.  Reporting from the Mexican side of the border, opposite El Paso, Bensman offers a firsthand account of migrant activity from the area where just two weeks ago hundreds of migrants pushed past Texas law enforcement in a daring charge to reach the Border Patrol, which they know will quickly process and releas ..read more

The starting point of any conversation about immigration should be the numbers. This week’s episode of the Center for Immigration Studies podcast highlights a recent report co-authored by Steven Camarota, the Center’s director of research, which examines the number and share of the foreign-born in the United States. The total foreign-born population, encompassing both legal and illegal immigrants, has soared to a record high of 51.4 million as of February 2024, marking a monumental increase of 6.4 million since President Biden assumed office. This increase has driven the foreign-born share to ..read more

In today’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Elizabeth Jacobs, the Center’s Director of Regulatory Affairs and Policy, does a deep dive into her recent analysis of the new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) fee schedule, set to take effect on April 1, 2024. Jacobs discusses how the 2024 fee rule is being leveraged to advance Biden's policy objectives, ignoring the requirement that USCIS fees should be commensurate with the costs of processing specific applications. As USCIS faces increased demands and backlogs, the implications of these fee adjustments extend beyond ..read more

Campaign season is in full swing as the 2024 presidential election looms less than eight months away. According to a recent Gallup poll, immigration is considered the biggest issue facing the country, with a majority of Americans expressing disapproval of the president’s handling of the issue.  In today’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, host Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director, dives into the politics of the immigration issue alongside journalist and author Mickey Kaus. As one of the earliest political bloggers and a democrat, Kaus brings a unique perspective to the co ..read more

Since September 2023, the Center for Immigration Studies has been on the forefront of reporting on the Biden administration direct-flight and parole program that has authorized the arrival of more than 320,000 inadmissible aliens through the CBP One app. The program allows migrants to take commercial passenger flights from foreign countries straight to their American cities of choice, without having to go to the southern land border. The program has largely operated under the radar until the Center filed a FOIA request, followed by litigation. The lawsuits continue – the Center is presently su ..read more

On this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, joins us to discuss what states and other local jurisdictions can do to combat illegal immigration in wake of the Biden administration’s refusal to enforce immigration laws. Vaughan joins us from the Western States Sheriffs’ Association convention in Reno, Nev. Vaughan provides suggestions to states and localities on policies and laws that can be implemented to remove illegal aliens from their jurisdictions and make their communities less attractive to illeg ..read more

President Biden and former President Trump are both scheduled to visit Texas border towns today, just as polling reveals widespread dissatisfaction with the president’s handling of the border and immigration. With the failure of the Senate border bill and growing concern over the record number of border crossers, news reports suggest President Biden may announce executive actions that would stem the border crisis his policies created. This week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy welcomes guest Andrew Arthur, the Center’s resident fellow in law and policy, who discusses one executive acti ..read more

The Senate bill that would provide billions of dollars’ worth of funding to Ukraine in exchange for increased border security measures is unlikely to pass into law, but certain provisions from the bill may make their way into future border legislation. Andrew Arthur, the Center for Immigration Studies’ Resident Fellow in Law and Policy and former counsel for the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, joins Parsing Immigration Policy to discuss the border bill with our host and executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, Mark Krikorian. Arthur provides background on the bill a ..read more

This Week's episode of the Parsing Immigration Podcast offers key findings from a European field-research trip by Todd Bensman, the Center’s national security fellow. Bensman was a visiting fellow at the Budapest-based Migration Research Institute, and examined borders in Hungary, Slovenia, Poland, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Greece. Bensman’s research revealed a resurgence of illegal human traffic along the “Western Balkan Route”, reminiscent of the 2015-2016 crisis. The 380,000 migrant detections in Europe during 2023 are merely suggestive of much larger undetected ..read more