A German couple will have its day in court once more as it appeals a decision barring them from seeking asylum in the United States in order to homeschool their children.

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, a devout Christian couple with five school-aged children, appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which decided last week to have oral arguments take place in April.

The Romeikes, who came to the United States in 2008, are being represented by the Home School Legal Defense Association. more >>

Evangelical leaders have been more supportive of immigration reform in recent years, but whether or not lay evangelicals will follow their leaders on this issue is still an open question, Dr. Ruth Melkonian-Hoover noted in a Wednesday presentation at the American Enterprise Institute.

Using data from Pew Research Center, Melkonian-Hoover, associate professor at Gordon College, Wenham, Mass., found that the amount of church attendance did not make a difference in perceptions of immigrants or support for immigration reform, but positive messages from pastors about immigrants did make a difference.

Among white evangelicals who say they have heard a positive message about immigrants from their pastor, 81.5 percent support a path to legalization for unauthorized immigrants, compared to only 54 percent of all white evangelicals. Among regular churchgoing white evangelicals, the percentage of those who see immigrants as a threat to society or the economy drops from 50.7 percent to 26.1 percent when they hear a positive message about immigrants from their pastors. more >>

America has always been a nation of immigrants. Their religiosity, high birth rates and work ethic settled a continent, built railroads, populated our cities, filled our houses of worship and grew our economy.

Between 1840 and 1860, 1.7 million Irish endured an inhumane trans-Atlantic passage, though nothing compared with that of slaves brought here against their will. Italians, Greeks and Russian Jews fled poverty and pogroms in the late 19th century. Cubans risked a watery death on rickety craft to escape Fidel Castro. In our own time Mexicans, Indians, Koreans and others come to the USA for the same reason: They hunger to be free.

Economics and security, too more >>

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. The Ronald Reagan amnesty of 1986 was a conspicuous failure, and a virtually identical plan failed in 2007 when it was pushed by John McCain, Ted Kennedy and George W. Bush.

Now the establishment has lined up eight Senators plus a media chorus to resurrect the Reagan amnesty. That may make sense if you are seeking leftwing Democratic votes, but it is insanity for conservatives and Republicans.

The Reagan amnesty admitted twice as many illegals as expected and was riddled with fraud and cheating. It started a gigantic stream of illegal aliens to walk, swim, or bribe their way across the border into the U.S. that has continued to this day. more >>

The United States is facing a crisis due to its falling fertility rate, author Jonathan Last argues in What to Expect When No One's Expecting: America's Coming Demographic Disaster.

The myth that the world is overpopulated and disasters will ensue as a result was popularized in Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book, The Population Bomb. The myth remains popular today even as Ehrlich's predictions turned out to be wildly off the mark. Not only was he wrong about mass starvation by the end of the 1970s, notes Last, a senior writer at The Weekly Standard, but he was wrong at exactly the time that fertility rates began a steep drop in the U.S. and across the world.

Last cites studies showing that nations with a growing population, those with "total fertility rate" (TFR) greater than 2.1 babies born per female over the course of her life, flourish, while nations with a TFR lower than 2.1 decline. High fertility nations flourish because they invest in their young and have higher rates of innovation. In low fertility nations, on the other hand, resources shift to caring for the elderly and fewer workers must work to pay for increased health care costs. more >>

Republicans are asking whether President Barack Obama really wants immigration reform to pass in the narrow window that experts say now exists in the Congress, pointing to a leak late last week and statements by officials over the weekend.

Some congressional Republicans are concerned that the White House immigration proposal leaked to USA Today over the weekend signaled that Obama is more interested in using the issue to divide the Republican Party ahead of the 2014 elections than actually getting an immigration reform bill signed into law, according to some political insiders.

The leak "does feed a fear" that Obama "will pull the rug out from under us," said Michael Gerson, a Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, on CBS' "Face the Nation." more >>