How Free Trade Reform Can Solve the Problem of Illegal Immigration from Mexico: A Modest Proposal

I will begin by stating that as I pleased as I was withmyself for concocting this inspired if long-winded title, I now regret mydecision.  The title might be appropriatefor, say,  a white paper…but not for whatI have to say today.  But I can’t thinkof anything more terse or pithy....

Jose E. Latour Nov 12, 2008

The Way of the Peaceful Warrior

I am in Mexico,a little less news-connected than when I’m home, but I’ve read enough in thepast 24 hours to see that those very pundits who were dead wrong over how thiselection would pan out are back  at it.  The theme this time is “he’s not tested”, and Biden’s honest remarksthat th...

Jose E. Latour Nov 07, 2008

Palin Goes Home

[My readers:  I have edited this original article considerably because after reading it the day after I wrote it, I realized that some of my comments were sarcastic and gloating, and that is not how I wish to express myself.  I have modified the article so that it still expresses my opinio...

Jose E. Latour Nov 05, 2008

Margarita Latour Votes for Change

[I will begin by telling you that I asked for her permission before writing this article, and my mother obliged.]My mother came to the United States in 1966, via the Cuban Adjustment Act.  She, my father, my Asturian nanny (today 81 and more ornery than ever) and I arrived in the dead of the night a...

Jose E. Latour Nov 03, 2008

Our Low Tech Commitment to High Tech Border Security

Tempted as I am to rant and rave over this latest stunning fiasco just revealed about ANOTHER failure in our national immigration security...I will spare you.  I went to the Holocaust museum today and I am drained.  But here is a brief chronology of events from the point of view of this fo...

Jose E. Latour Oct 26, 2008

One Last Immigration Fiasco from the Bush Administration

Well, just when I thought the extraordinary missteps and bungled results of the Bush administration's catastrophic failure to grasp even the basic fundamentals of migratory policy were near their end, he did it again:  amidst much pomp and circumstance in the Rose Garden yesterday, and utt...

Jose E. Latour Oct 18, 2008

WIth Liberty and Justice…for SOME

The Fed's GAO office just released a statistical study of how political asylum applicants in the U.S. fare in their filings.  The results are simply more proof of what we already know...that the U.S. immigration is so hopelessly, pathetically, completely broken that the next President need...

Jose E. Latour Oct 05, 2008

It’s Basic Supply and Demand

Once again, the xenophobes are proven wrong: despite the hysteria, illegal immigration to the U.S. is the direct result of U.S. labor shortages, and when the jobs stop coming...so do the illegal migrants.The Associated Press reported today that, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington thi...

Jose E. Latour Oct 02, 2008

Basic Economics

I sat there, stunned, as George W. Bush gave the nation a nutshell explanation of basic economic theory, reading his Teleprompter quite well and not stumbling as he usually does.  Still, what he was saying would have been more clearly stated to the American people via a simple "We in a HEA...

Jose E. Latour Sep 25, 2008

Tweaking E-Verify

With the election just weeks away, the economy reeling, and the future looking anything but bright, the rhetoric regarding employment verification has cooled a bit of late.  But one thing remains clear: E-Verify, love it or hate it, seems to be solidly established as the federal government'...

Jose E. Latour Sep 24, 2008