Texas GOP Vote

The following article was written by Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity:

In the Washington Post today, Jim DeMint and Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation invoke the free-market pantheon in arguing their anti-immigration stance: “The economist Milton Friedman warned that the United States cannot have open borders and an extensive welfare state.”

They’re halfway right about that. What Friedman actually said was that immigration is “a good thing for the United States…so long as it’s illegal.”

VOCES Action and King Street Live teamed up last night to introduce a panel of immigration experts to discuss immigration reform and border security. The event was moderated by VOCES Action National Director and TexasGOPVote blogger Adryana Boyne and panelists included TexasGOPVote blogger and US Border Watch volunteer Bob Price, TexasGOPVote blogger and immigration attorney Linda Vega, former Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina, founder of Cross Culture Communications Edward Retta, and

By way of background, I have been a licensed attorney for almost 23 years. Of those 23 years, I spent nine years as a state prosecutor and over 2 years as a federal prosecutor. As a federal prosecutor, I prosecuted the entire gambit of border immigration cases including misdemeanor violations of border entries (8 U.S.C. § 1325), felony re-entry of a removed aliens (8 U.S.C. § 1326), and felony alien smuggling cases (8 U.S.C. § 1324).   Read more »

The 2011 Texas Legislature passed a new law to prohibit the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) from issuing a Texas Driver's License to anyone who could not prove they were a citizen or legal U.S. resident. There were many good reasons for that I will address later, but there was one HUGE unintended consequence. The passage of this law created more lawlessness on Texas highways

Texas Senator John Carona (R-Dallas) has been working hard for several years trying to get the State of Texas to enforce the existing laws on employee misclassification and add some teeth to the current laws by increasing the penalties for misclassifying workers as independent contractors when they are truly employees. Misclassification is also one of the biggest ways unethical employers skirt employment law and give jobs to illegal immigrants who work as day laborers.

Last week, I reported on a hearing held in the Texas Senate on Sen. Carona's bill, SB 676. While no one spoke in opposition to the bill, and commercial

For several years, TexasGOPVote and ConstructionCitizen.com have been sounding the alarm about issues related to employee misclassification and why this is a problem for Texas taxpayers and businesses. The 2011 Legislative Session was unable to pass any meaningful changes to the law to help correct the problems caused by misclassification. It now appears that a coalition of business associations and concerned legislators may well move the issue forward during the 2013 session.

Testimony was heard in the Texas Senate on SB 676 filed by Senator John Carona (R-Dallas). The committee heard testimony from business owners, trade association and labor groups, all of whom

US Senator John Cornyn

Steve Munisteri chairman of the Republican Party of Texas has done a great job with the Grassroots Club. On April 1, the Grassroots Club members were invited to a brunch at Cisco’s Restaurant in Austin with Senator John Cornyn.

An important statewide conference will be taking place in the beautiful Texas State Capitol from 10 AM to – 3 PM on Saturday April 6th, at the Capitol Grill (enter in the main capitol building).

The theme of the event is: Una Nacion Under God: A Dialogue, which is designed to impact the national debate with a focus

Construction mogul Donald Trump stood before CPAC last week and called for a de facto amnesty for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in this country. Trump said Republicans should block immigration reform because 100% of any new citizens created by immigration reform would be Democrats.

This is more of the typical block-everything, solve-nothing immigration policy that has left Republicans on the short side of the vote in the past two presidential elections. We have followed this path for many years now and we are no closer to solving our nation's broken immigration system now than we were then.   Read more »

Many times laws written by the legislature have unintended consequences. The 2011 Texas Legislature passed a law requiring the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to verify proof of citizenship or legal immigration status before issuing a driver's license. The intent was to make our roads safer by reducing the number of illegal aliens driving on our roads. The reality of what has happened is far worse than just the opposite of the intention.     Read more »