More and more Latinos are wising up to President Obama\'s phony immigration two-step. They include Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, who was until recently the administration\'s favorite Latino journalist. Ramos earned the honor by gushing over Obama during the 2008 election.

Republican legislators have been rightly appalled by the degree to which their Democratic colleagues are going about their usual business of proposing new regulations and expanding government as California struggles with an enormous structural deficit and oppressive unfunded liabilities for state workers\' pensions and other entitlements.

A state Assembly committee dominated by Democrats on Tuesday killed bills to require public officials to report suspected illegal immigrants and to prohibit employers from knowingly hiring the immigrants.

Immigration reform is on hold indefinitely because of a stalemate, exorbitant costs and constitutional restrictions. Republicans in Congress will not introduce immigration reform because the Democratic-controlled Senate and the president will stop it. The Democrats will not introduce reform because the Republican-controlled House will not fund it.

When Arizona lawmakers enacted legislation last year inflating the power of police officers to check immigration status when they make even routine stops, they staked out a reputation for the state as a citadel of intolerance. That was by design, for their explicit purpose was to drive away the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who, lured by jobs and a booming economy, had arrived in the state in the preceding 10 or 15 years.

A group of 270 farmers and other businessmen mostly representing Georgia’s agricultural and landscaping industries is warning lawmakers about the impact their immigration enforcement legislation could have on the state’s economy.

President Obama said Monday that he does not have the power to suspend deportations, putting the nail in a plan some administration officials had explored that could have granted de-facto legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. A number of immigrant-rights advocates have called on the president to use executive authority to stop deportations, and memos surfaced last year showing that Homeland Security lawyers had looked into the legal implications. But Mr. Obama, in a town hall hosted by the Spanish-language Univision broadcast network, said that’s not an option.

Community and religious groups are reporting an increase in scams targeting undocumented immigrants in the wake of Utah’s immigration reforms. Rose Maizner, director of development at the Enriching Utah Coalition, said her group has received so many calls from people saying they have been approached by unscrupulous vendors selling phony guest-worker permits that her nonprofit is using its crisis line.

Topeka — Kansas’ Hispanic legislators on Monday filed a bipartisan resolution that calls on the federal government — not the states — to work on immigration and specifies that any reforms should be humane, fair and just. “We want to take the hate out of the debate,” said Rep. Louis Ruiz, D-Kansas City, who proposed the resolution.

Less than a year ago, Utah business leaders worried that their state would follow in Arizona’s controversial footsteps by passing tough new laws to crack down on illegal immigration. Already, there were signs that a divisive debate — the kind that led to mass protests, boycotts and lawsuits in Phoenix — was shaping up in Utah, too.

New Census figures out this week show that the Hispanic population in the U.S. has increased dramatically over the last decade. Hispanics now number roughly 50 million nationwide, up from 35 million in 2000. They also are no longer concentrated in just a handful of Southwestern states, as they were for decades, but have spread out across the country. Some of the largest percentage increases have incurred in Southern states, with the Hispanic population more than doubling in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee. Both higher Hispanic birthrates and immigration have driven this trend.

The passage of a package of immigration bills in Utah has raised the possibility that the so-called Utah Solution could well become the American Solution. As it stands right now, Utah\'s law would not be legal if allowed to go into effect in two years because immigration is the domain of Congress. But that is not the point.

SAN DIEGO — When he changed parties a few months ago, Texas state Rep. Aaron Pena made waves. Now, as he tries to take a grown-up approach to the immigration issue, the Democrat-turned-Republican is making sense. As when Pena told me, \"Part of the reason I\'m doing this is to get the public to stop talking out of both sides of their mouths. We\'re responsible because we offer (illegal immigrants) jobs.\"

Ever since Arizona passed its tough immigration law penalizing undocumented workers, other states have been considering similar laws. But so far, no Arizona-type legislation has passed. Instead, one state has chosen a different approach that it hopes will become an alternative model for dealing with the illegal immigration problem.

The fate of recent immigration legislation in two Western states makes us wonder whether public opinion is turning on this divisive issue. We certainly hope so. Last week, the governor of Utah, a solidly Republican state, signed into law four immigration reform bills that, among other things, establish a guest-worker program. And in Arizona, which has some of the toughest immigration laws in the country, lawmakers voted down five tough anti-immigrant bills.

It’s hard to imagine two more different sheriffs than Nye County’s Tony DeMeo and Maricopa County, Ariz., law boss Joe Arpaio. Outside Pahrump, you probably haven’t heard much about DeMeo. But he made headlines last week by calling out Nye County tax assessor Shirley Matson for her racially charged comments about Latino construction workers.