Supporters of stricter border enforcement must have uncorked the champagne yesterday. The Senate, in bipartisan fashion, broke a deadlock over funding and passed S. 3721, a $600 million emergency appropriation that would bring 1,500 more federal enforcers and unmanned aerial drones to the U.S. border. Last week, the requisite number of House members voted…

Amid all the pre-election hurling of vituperative, partisan accusations this week over a Federal Court’s partial injunction against AZ SB 1070 (Arizona’s foray into federal immigration enforcement), you would be forgiven if you overlooked two small but significant creatures in the immigration ecosystem.

A pair of remedial immigration bills, passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee…

I’ve written time and again on the mission amnesia that afflicts federal immigration agencies. For students of bureaucratic behavior in the immigration ecosystem, another key lesson on forgetfulness can be learned in a teachable moment offered at taxpayer expense if we examine federal decisions in the pre-spill era before the offshore and onshore catastrophe in…

[Y]ou have to be prepared at any moment to face difficulties and even dangers by knowing what to do and how to do it.

Agnes and Robert Baden-Powell, How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire

Be Prepared in [m]ind . . . by having thought out beforehand any . . . situation that

…

Every once in a while a government agency in the immigration space does the right thing. If I’m to maintain credibility and objectivity in the eyes of readers, I need to call out functional behavior when I see it — notwithstanding that this blog is dedicated to dysfunctions in the immigration ecosystem.

The agency worthy…

I don’t live in Washington, but almost every time I travel there, as I’ve done this week, something comes over me. Inside the Beltway, talk can give off the illusion of action. The mouthing of words, however powerful on the printed page or eloquent when spoken, is seen here as equivalent to progress.

President Obama’s…

From time immemorial, the world has been a dangerous place; no less so today. Those with the means and will have have always relocated to less threatening or merely more desirable locales. In today’s globalized and interconnected era, the European debt crisis, terrorism, declared and undeclared wars, restrictions on religious and political freedom, and the…

It seems like ages since the federal government transformed the rules on when and how foreign citizens apply for visas to enter the United States. Actually, the most dramatic changes occurred in the summers of 2003 and 2004.

In 2003, the government dramatically restricted the authority of American consular officers to waive the appearance of …