With the latest revelation that a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Jose Antonio Vargas, has come out as an illegal alien and John McCain’s latest stupidity, the issue of illegal immigration has popped back up. More and more states are joining the lead of Arizona and Alabama and are trying to take the immigration issue into [...]

It’s beginning to be really easy to hate Facebook. While Google has stuck to its libertarian principles of free exchange of information by not cooperating with Chinese censorship, Facebook has become more and more creepy: The people behind the “Just Say Now” marijuana legalization campaign (oft-Boinged Salon contributor Glenn Greenwald is one of many political [...]

I wanted to link over to a recent article I wrote at the blog Voice of the Migrant, where I talk about the distinguishable products and services that America’s Hispanic immigrants bring to our society: In a New Yorker article from 2006, James Surowiecki explores how sugar producers in the United States lobbying for “special favors” has [...]

This is a post in our continuing “Point/Counterpoint” series, where TLP contributors and/or guest posters debate a topic. In this installment, Michael Powell argues against the existence of “states’ rights”. Tomorrow, Brad Warbiany will defend states’ rights, and his post can now be found here. During the twentieth century, there were several confrontations between federal [...]

This is actually a comment at Hit & Run, but I hadn’t seen this juxtaposition before. The other thing I always find hilarious is how so many anti-immigration Republicans are so anti-union, when they use the same arguments against immigrants that unions use against non-union workers. In both cases, the impetus is the same: “I’ve [...]

Via Coyote, after seeing an E-Verify poster that states “If you have the right to work, Don’t let anyone take it away”: This is fairly Orwellian for those of us who believe that all people have the right to work, irrespective of the country they were born in, and this right does not flow from [...]

As someone whose great-grandparents were the ones who dropped everything they knew, hopped on a boat to cross an ocean to an entirely new continent, and built an entirely new life in the freedom of America, I’m somewhat blessed. So I share TJIC’s thoughts here. What I’d never considered is exactly what it would take [...]

I am honored to join The Liberty Papers. Brad Warbiany and Doug Mataconis have been very welcoming, and my new realm into libertarian thought should be fulfilling and rich. I’ve been at United Liberty for two years, starting with the 2008 election and running all the way up to coverage of Arizona’s discriminatory immigration law. [...]

Coyote, in far more concise words than I probably could have generated, asks a very good question. What I would really understand is: what drives these folks? I will take them at their word that it is not racism. If its violent or property crime, the stats are pretty clear that immigrants don’t really contribute [...]

One of the key arguments in favor of the AZ “papers please” immigration law is that the state is being overrun by crime due to the rapid influx of immigration, and that the across-the-border drug wars have been spilling over into Arizona. That might be a potent argument, if it were true. It’s truly sad [...]

Idiocy. That’s all I can use to preface this: The 26-page draft obtained by CNN attempts to woo GOP senators in part by calling for “concrete benchmarks” to secure the border before granting illegal immigrants the opportunity to gain legal status. Those benchmarks include: increasing the number of border patrol officers and U.S. Immigration and [...]

From Matt Welch, @ Reason: I have also “knowingly employ[ed] an unauthorized alien,” and “intentionally employ[ed] unauthorized aliens” (or at least, I had a pretty good idea that the dudes in front of Home Depot had a non-trivial chance of being “unauthorized”). Speaking of which, “unauthorized” is my new favorite illegal/undocumented term of art. “Unauthorized.” [...]

Via Twitter, I came up this 2007 Examiner article by Dan Riehl of Riehl World View that offers what seems like the beginning of a way out of what has been little more than three year long shouting match over the subject of immigration, illegal immigrants, and immigration reform: As with current and past generations, [...]

Those of us who truly believe in limited government* tend to be simultaneously amused and irritated hearing the folks at CPAC speak of limited government as though it’s a principle they truly support. Yesterday, the Libertarian Party’s Executive Director Wes Benedict, monitoring the CPAC festivities from afar, said some of the things that many of [...]

Many readers here are also familiar with the United Liberty blog, not least because our contributor Jason Pye is the editor-in-chief of that blog, and co-contributor Doug writes at both locations. They (Jason and UL Assistant Editor Brett Bittner) recently honored me be asking that I join them as a guest on their podcast, which [...]

From the “Not The Onion” files comes a tale that I can’t even believe, much less figure out how to respond to. Is this really what the Boy Scouts are becoming? The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in [...]

Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) in his recent article calling for a major reform of America’s prisons in Parade Magazine brought some very disturbing, eye opening, statistics about America’s prison system to light. In summary this is some of what he found: -Since 1984, America’s prison population has quadrupled from 580,000 to 2.3 million -Though the [...]

The Obama administration, rather than dealing with the root cause of the violence along the Mexican border, has decided to adopt a policy to deal with the symptoms. The problem is that this policy will neither alleviate the symptoms nor come close to treating the problem. WASHINGTON – The Obama administration promised Tuesday to help [...]

From a NYT story about new banking regulations attached to the bailout funds (and the desire for some of these banks to now return the money): The list of demands keeps getting longer. Financial institutions that are getting government bailout funds have been told to put off evictions and modify mortgages for distressed homeowners. They [...]

Many people have worried about the threat that China and India post to America by moving towards first-world economic powers. After all, they have, between the two of them, somewhere in the realm of 2.5B people, and if the same proportion of their students become engineers and scientists as we see here, they will be [...]