Center for Immigration Studies — To crib from Caesar, all immigration policy is divided into three parts: you can enforce the law and deport the illegals, you can ignore them (and there is a lot of that going around), or you can pay them to stay in this country.
Not even the White House is publicly advocating the third option, but recently the Treasury took exactly that approach, and sent $4.2 billion to families of illegal aliens, as CIS reported in blog at the time.1
Why and how this came to pass is an unusual story with a plethora of players — including two heroes — about how our government works and how faceless, midlevel decision-makers can, and do, shape our basic policies. And how the courts are, in effect, powerless to do anything about it.
This particular paying-the-illegals-to-stay pattern revolves around the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), which is not so much a tax credit as it is an income-transfer program for low-income families, offering up to $1,000 per child to all resident families, including those of illegal aliens… [Read More]