by Robert E. Rector
WebMemo #1523
Last week, the White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report entitled "Immigration's Economic Impact" which defended the President's promotion of the Senate's "comprehensive" immigration legislation (S.1348).[1] On June 25, the White House issued a follow-up editorial elaborating on the points made in the CEA report.[2] These publications criticized Heritage Foundation research on the fiscal costs of low skill immigration and amnesty. 
The Heritage research criticized by the White House made the following basic points about immigration and its costs:
Individuals without a high school degree impose significant net costs (the extent to which benefits and services received exceed taxes paid) on taxpayers.
The net fiscal cost of families of immigrants who lack a high school degree is not markedly different from the net fiscal cost of families of non-immigrants who lack a high school degree.
Immigrants are disproportionately low skilled; one-third of all immigrants and 50 to 60 percent of illegal immigrants lack a high school degree.
Unlike low and moderate skill immigrants, immigrants with a college education will pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits; therefore. immigration policy should increase the number of high skill immigrants entering the country ...   more »

The White House sent out a message to "Jewish Leaders" last Wednesday.
For some reason, I, an Arab-American Christian journalist, received a copy. (This won't surprise those who deride me as a "neocon," which has become a euphemism for Jew.)
The message came from Jeremy Katz of the Office of Public Liaison, who identifies himself as the White House liaison to the Jewish community. (I couldn't help but wonder how many other taxpayer-supported liaisons there might be.)
Katz offered that he wanted to ensure that recipients "didn't miss this important statement from the president."
Here's what it said: "I am strongly committed to Israel's security and viability as a Jewish state, and to the maintenance of its qualitative military edge. During our meeting today, I told Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert that I am committed to reaching a new 10-year agreement that will give Israel the increased assistance it requires to meet the new threats and challenges it faces. The work on this new agreement was launched during the prime minister's previous visit. I will send Under Secretary of State Nick Burns and an interagency team to Israel in July to lead discussions aimed at concluding an agreement soon."
Translation?
(Column ...   more »

 America's movie industry is a potent weapon of global reach that has shaped the world's imagination for generations. In that sense, "A Mighty Heart," the movie that pretends to tell the story of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and beheaded in 2002 by Islamic jihadists in Pakistan, ranks as a travesty.
Pearl's story is a real-life yarn of multiple dimensions that, at its most grandiose, could have been spun as the tale of a great clash, a sort of collision between Nazi-like value systems and basic American ones — in the story of a working journalist on the chaotic streets of Pakistan.
It could have been treated as the story of a man who grew up believing in something — an American raised by liberal Jewish parents to accept everyone's beliefs — only to be killed in a far-away land by nihilists who believed in nothing.
It could also have been a sideways profile of the American press — which, for all its foibles, has introduced the world to the notions of freedom of expression and democracy.
It is also the story of many Muslim countries, an oft-enacted tale of how failed values pry open a ...   more »

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Adnan Abbas – with his poor English, four young daughters, and little money to speak of – shrugs when told that making a new life in the US will be hard.
"I know that a new country, new language, is difficult and that America isn't going to say, 'Welcome, Adnan, here's a million dollars,' " he says. "But life in Iraq? That's impossible. We're one of the luckiest families in the world."
On Tuesday, the Abbas family will take their five small suitcases, close the door on the small flat they've rented for the past year in Amman, Jordan, and start a journey that will eventually taken them to Lansing, Mich. They are in the vanguard of what's likely to become – if the history of American wars is anything to go by – the latest wave of immigrants to have an impact on the demographics of the US.
In February, the US agreed to accept 7,000 Iraqi refugees this year, a large jump over the fewer than 700 Iraqis accepted by the US in the first three years of the war but a drop in the ocean when measured ...   more »