No matter the season, no matter the year, you can expect the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) to put out a report chock-full of pseudo-research that concludes with calls for fewer immigrants in the U.S.
For example, see their recent report blaming immigrants for climate change (I wish I was kidding). Almost unbelievably, CIS tried to claim that immigration to the United States is a driver of climate change and global warming. Yet the study is little more than a thinly-veiled attempt try to advance an anti-immigration agenda by appealing to Americans’ concerns over other issues.
Or, take their other recent report, which tries to assert that the Bush Administration’s enforcement efforts were driving a reduction in the undocumented population. Of course, this conveniently ignores our nation’s precipitous economic downturn. Earlier this year, Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California-San Diego, issued a report that found that illegal immigration “clearly corresponds to changing U.S. economic conditions.” And, as many have reported, the Bush Administration’s recent immigration raids are designed to garner headlines and do little to address the underlying dynamics of our broken system. As the Washington Post recently editorialized, “the administration’s strategy of emphasizing punishment rather than prevention underscores the need for a more durable solution.”
Despite their tortured math and creative logic, there’s nothing funny about CIS’s goals. CIS and other members of the restrictionist fringe would rather peddle extremist policies than work towards lasting, common sense reforms that will fix the broken immigration system.
