General Immigration

Even as they grapple with an immigration crisis at the border, White House officials are making plans to act before November's mid-term elections to grant work permits to potentially millions of immigrants who are in this country illegally, allowing them to stay in the United States without threat of deportation, according to advocates and lawmakers in touch with the administration. Read more >

Outside a sterile City Hall fringed by the town’s historical artifacts, McAllen Mayor Jim Darling walks at a brisk pace with his communications director leading five paces ahead of him. His face is marked with worry as it had been for just about every day for the past two months, if not longer. Darling had just come out from a roundtable discussion with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), and border town mayors, and he looked concerned. Read more >

Both Administrative and congressional action on the "border crisis" is looming, with Congress headed for its month-long summer break at the end of next week. Obama is meeting today with the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and he will reportedly urge them to step up their "public relations campaign" to deter people from leaving their homelands -- not exactly the policy response we think the U.S. Read more >

Even as President Obama grapples with the crisis of immigrant children arriving at the Southwest border, White House officials are laying the groundwork for a large-scale expansion of immigrant rights that would come by executive action within weeks.

Officials signaled strongly Friday that Obama's move would shield from deportation large numbers of immigrants living in the country illegally, as advocacy groups have demanded. Read more >

President Obama will sit down Friday with the presidents of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala - the three countries that have been the greatest source of children illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

In addition to their meeting with Mr. Obama, the leaders are visiting Capitol Hill and are taking part in a panel discussion - and they're armed with a laundry list of issues to discuss with U.S. leaders. Read more >

Something similar is happening at the U.S.-Mexico border and on the Mediterranean. In both places, lifesaving and rights-respecting policies are being blamed for a surge in migrants and asylum seekers.

Italy started a rescue-at-sea operation called Mare Nostrum in response to the drowning of 360 boat migrants in October. In the first six months of this year, 65,000 boat migrants arrived in Italy, an eightfold increase over the same period in 2013. Read more >