"Immigration Judges Often Picked Based On GOP Ties"

Read the full article subtitled "Law Forbids Practice; Courts Being Reshaped" by Amy Goldstein and Dan Eggen, The Washington Post, June 11, 2007.

Lead: "The Bush administration increasingly emphasized partisan political ties over expertise in recent years in selecting the judges who decide the fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, despite laws that preclude such considerations, according to an analysis by The Washington Post."

The article continues: "At least one-third of the immigration judges appointed by the Justice Department since 2004 have had Republican connections or have been administration insiders, and half lacked experience in immigration law, Justice Department, immigration court and other records show."

Comment: This article hits on two themes I have emphasized on this blog.

• The Bush administration is substituting ideological and political criteria for an expertise criterion in making appointments;
• Immigration policy is being made poorly.

Too bad! JAD

WP also reports:

Supporters of the immigration overhaul package, which failed to come up for a vote in the Senate last week, will try to resurrect the legislation.

President Bush will make a rare visit to the Senate on Tuesday to urge Republicans to get behind the bill. The measure would beef up border security, increase penalties for companies that hire illegal laborers, create a temporary-worker program and offer a path to citizenship for many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already here.

Lets hope that the President can restart the process, and that the legislative and executive branches can finally get together to pass a much needed immigration reform bill. Let us further hope it will actually improve rather than worsen the situation.

Another indicator of the extent of the immigration problems from the WP:

U.S. authorities last week blamed tuberculosis carrier Andrew Speaker's illicit reentry to America on a single point of human error, faulting a Champlain, N.Y., inspector who failed to detain him as instructed by a computer alert.

But the episode underscored much broader gaps in border security that may persist as a result of actions taken by Congress and the Bush administration on passport and immigration policies in recent weeks, former U.S. officials, analysts and government reports say.

Remember guys, "The ideal is the enemy of the good!"