Immigration | featured news

When Oscar Reyes heads north for seasonal work every spring, he no longer pays a smuggler to sneak him through the desert past the U.S. Border Patrol.

Measures on gay rights and child safety are among the top state laws taking effect at the start of 2013, along with attempts to prevent identity theft and perennial efforts to restrict abortion and illegal immigration.

The House of Representatives passed a bill Friday that would grant more visas to highly skilled foreigners while eliminating a program that awards visas through a lottery system.

The outsized role that Latino voters played in securing victories for President Obama and Democratic Senate candidates has energized the effort to rewrite America's immigration laws, but opposition in Congress, particularly among House Republicans, remains a significant hurdle.

President Obama says he's confident he can get an immigration bill -- because Republicans need Hispanic votes.

Fewer than expected are seeking to join President Obama's program to defer deportation. Some fear a future administration could use their applications against them or their families.

Mitt Romney plans to make an appeal to Hispanic voters Monday in a speech where he is expected to distinguish himself as the better presidential candidate on economy and immigration, a topic that has brought his campaign considerable controversy.

A top official says he was pushed aside in favor of a less qualified woman, and that the work environment was hostile toward men... A discrimination and retaliation lawsuit has embroiled the upper reaches of the federal government’s immigration enforcement agency, contributing to a sense of turmoil in a bureaucracy that has been suffering major labor conflicts between senior officials and employees.

Opponents of Arizona’s hardline immigration enforcement law contend that emails sent, received and forwarded by a former legislator who championed the law support allegations it was racially motivated.

When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the key provision of Arizona's immigration enforcement law last month, opponents of the measure were encouraged that the court left the door open for future lawsuits once the law goes into effect. But legal experts warn that lawsuits claiming racial profiling by police officers — one of the avenues that Justice Anthony Kennedy listed as a way to challenge the law — take a long time to develop and are difficult to win.