News Article Thread - 1

[sobers]

Its clear that cutting down on the number of EB visas will be a top priority for the restrictionist FAIR in conference committtee.

We have to support IV's fundraising efforts to the maximum extent possible- that is the best chance for those with later PDs (2003 and beyond) if they want to see the dates current.


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FAIR’s Top Ten List of the Worst Provisions of the Senate’s Kennedy-Bush-McCain Guest Worker Amnesty Bill

Washington, DC—While David Letterman’s writing staff struggles to come up with ten funny things to say about a topical issue each night, FAIR’s legislative staff took a long look at the immigration bill passed by the U.S. Senate late last month to pick out its worst provisions. The bill, S.2611, includes so many features that would damage the interests of American citizens we found it difficult to list just ten.

In descending order (Letterman style), FAIR’s list of the ten worst provisions of the Kennedy-McCain-Bush illegal alien guest worker amnesty:

10. Allows illegal aliens to claim Social Security benefits for work performed illegally.

9. Creates new foreign student visa programs with a direct path to legal permanent residence status and citizenship.

8. Requires consultation with the Mexican government before construction of fencing along the border.

7. Allows states to give illegal aliens in-state tuition benefits that they can deny to citizens who live in other states.

6. Gives the Department of Homeland Security the discretion to waive fines for employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens.

5. Increases the number of employment-based immigrants admitted to the U.S. each year by more than 400 percent.

4. Admits 1.5 million agricultural “guest workers” with a direct path to legal permanent residence status and citizenship.

3. Admits hundreds of thousands unskilled “guest workers” through a new guest worker program and gives them a direct path to legal permanent residence and citizenship.

2. Grants amnesty to family members of illegal aliens who live outside the country.

1. Grants amnesty to millions (nobody really knows how many millions) of illegal aliens living in the U.S.

“It would certainly be reasonable to quibble over which provisions of this bill do the most damage to the interests of the nation and the American public,” admitted Dan Stein, president of FAIR. “The bottom line is that should S. 2611 ever become law, America will face the largest influx of immigrants in human history, devastating overpopulation, destruction of the middle class, deep social and linguistic divisions, and crippling unfunded mandates.

“We believe that as the American public learns about what is included in the Kennedy-McCain-Bush amnesty/guest worker bill, their anger at a Senate and an administration that is indifferent to their needs and interests will boil over,” continued Stein. “The Senate bill is such a complete sell-out of American principles and interests that the voters will take their anger to the polls with them this November. Who knows? The topic for an upcoming Late Show program might be the “Top Ten Jobs Now Being Done by Former Members of Congress.”

[indianindian2006]

http://www.1bakersfield.com/news/read/25/80539

[go_gc_way]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5054214.stm

Following is from the article above ..


"International migration can be highly beneficial for the development both of the countries they come from and of those where they arrive

Kofi Annan
UN Secretary General"

[gc_hope]

Here is an article published in the latest issue of the American Medical News, the newspaper / broadsheet published by the AMA, the American Medical Association.

Pretty much all of the things that have been published featuring other IV members, but this one includes a doctor's story.

Arizona doctor sees immigration bill as a hope for himself, others

Congress is debating whether to allow more foreign doctors to get into the country on temporary visas and whether to let more stay here permanently.
By Elaine Monaghan, AMNews staff. June 19, 2006.

Washington -- For months now, Alok Sharma, MD, an Indian internist practicing in underserved Arizona, has been picturing his green card, a precious paper that would finally let his wife start her medical residency and give his family permanent status 10 years after arriving in the United States.

Lately he has had an even bolder fantasy: that he could start his own practice, something he cannot even imagine now with his temporary H-1b visa, which will expire in three years.

Now this physician couple's fate is in the hands of Congress, where the Senate breathed life into their long-shelved plans last month when it approved an immigration bill that could vastly improve Dr. Sharma's chances of making America his permanent home.

The measure would exempt specialists from a cap on green cards. It also would increase from 7% to 10% the portion of green cards handed out to skilled workers from any one country, helping Indian and Chinese doctors in particular because they have had to compete with so many hi-tech workers from their homelands, said Greg Siskind, a founding partner of a Memphis, Tenn.-based immigration law firm, who has studied the bill.

"I have lived and dreamed about this for the whole of the last six months," Dr Sharma said in an interview from Somerton, Ariz., where he serves as a staff internist at Sunset Community Health Center. Lobbyists are hard at work trying to ensure that the provisions survive lawmakers' negotiations to iron out differences between the Senate and House bills. The House version focuses on stemming the flow of illegal crossings rather than helping legal immigrants stay.

Dr. Sharma is with an ad hoc group of immigrants of various professions that won the Senate amendments aimed at securing their foothold here. Supporters of the provisions argue that the changes would help ease a shortage of specialists here, particularly in rural areas.

In addition to the green card provisions, the bill includes an increase in the number of physicians and people in technical professions who can enter the country on H1-b visas. It also would make permanent a special J-1 visa program that allows 30 immigrants into each state for graduate medical education, Siskind said.

Immigration "ground zero"
Paradoxically, on arriving in the United States as a legal immigrant, Dr. Sharma found himself in what he calls the medical "ground zero" of illegal immigration. The issue has touched every part of his professional life.

Dr. Sharma recalls a day five years ago when the border patrol brought a half-dozen men with hypothermia to Kino Community Hospital in Tucson, Ariz. The facility is near one of the spots used by "coyotes," people who smuggle illegal immigrants into the country.

Working in the emergency department at the time, Dr. Sharma tried to help raise one man's temperature, knowing it was hopeless.

"The crushing part of the story was that his brother was among the living. I can still remember how he just broke down and cried and cried, a 30-something guy. I asked him what he would do. He said I don't know, but we paid so much to get here and I'm just going to try to work to pay back the debt we incurred getting here."

Often a place to turn for the underinsured, uninsured and illegal immigrants, the hospital has since closed. This happened despite the efforts of Richard H. Carmona, MD, MPH, who was its medical director from 1994-99 and subsequently became the U.S. surgeon general.

In recent weeks, Dr. Sharma has paid attention to the activity at San Luis, Ariz., 11 miles away from his clinic, where National Guard troops sent in by President Bush have been strengthening protections against illegal crossings.

But mostly these days Dr. Sharma is focused on his own immigration status, which currently robs his wife Poonam, who also is qualified as a physician in India, of a chance to work, and limits the future of their 4-year-old twin boys, Adi and Puru.

Without permanent residency status, he cannot take out a loan and his spouse is barred from following her profession because his visa allows him to bring his family but does not allow his spouse to work. He also is restricted in jobs he can take despite having trained at the prestigious Armed Forces Medical College in Pune, Maharashtra in India, worked five years in a mountain commando unit in the Himalayas and won a commendation, a rare honor for an Indian Army medic.

The fight ahead
As potential beneficiaries of the Senate bill, this family is far from alone.

"The Senate bill is great," Siskind said. "It's going to provide a lot of relief." But he predicted there would be a "knockdown, drag-out fight" with the House, where he said there were many opponents of all forms of immigration who would "do it to the doctors like they would to any other group."

But Siskind anticipates that the raft of pro-legal immigration provisions that impact physicians will survive the House-Senate negotiations, partly because they have support from prominent Senate Republicans Sam Brownback of Kansas and John Cornyn of Texas.

The American Medical Association hasn't taken a position on the legislation pending further study. Bernd Wollschlaeger, MD, chair of the AMA's International Medical Graduate Section, speaking for himself because the body has also not taken an official position, said the section always welcomed openings for IMGs to work in the United States through both visa programs, while taking care not to hurt health care access in their home countries.

"We consider that an opportunity to provide services for underserved medical areas," he said. Bearing in mind specialist shortages here, he added: "We should judge according to specialties and not country of origin."

Dr. Sharma feels exactly the same way. "I am enjoying my work as an internal medicine physician. I do the regular job any doctor does. There's no problem with that. But I cannot plan for my future or for the future of my family," he said.

[for_gc]

Here is an article by Mike Pence in WSJ this saturday (6/10). It made sense to me.

"President Bush has set out his goals on immigration reform to the American people. "There is," he said, "a rational middle ground between granting an automatic path to citizenship for every illegal immigrant, and a program of mass deportation." I agree that a rational middle ground can be found -- but amnesty is not the middle ground.

Instead, I will soon be introducing legislation, the Border Integrity and Immigration Reform Act. This bill is tough on border security and tough on employers who hire illegal aliens. It will include a guest worker program -- but it will not include an amnesty (nor require a huge new government bureaucracy to administer the program). I believe this legislation is a strong alternative to the amnesty plan passed by the Senate; and I hope that it will serve as an attractive alternative to my colleagues in the House of Representatives.

Since immigration reform must begin by securing our border, my plan incorporates the Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act, already passed by the House, in its entirety, with only minor changes. Thus my plan will add port-of-entry inspectors, end the policy of "catch and release," put to use American technology such as unmanned aerial vehicles, require a security fence to be built across our southern border, and require the Secretary of Homeland Security to certify that all these border security measures are substantially completed before any new guest worker program would begin.

But my bill does not include a so-called path to citizenship, i.e., an amnesty, for the some 12 million illegal aliens in this country. Instead, it insists that they leave and come back legally if they have a job opportunity in the U.S. They will be allowed to do so under the terms of a guest-worker program that will be implemented by firms in the private sector, not by a new government bureaucracy.

Private worker-placement agencies -- "Ellis Island Centers" -- would be licensed by the federal government to match guest workers with jobs that employers cannot fill with American workers. These agencies will match guest workers with jobs, perform health screening, fingerprint them, and convey the appropriate information to the FBI and Homeland Security so that a background check can be performed. Once this is done, the guest worker would be provided with a visa issued by the State Department. The whole process will take a matter of one week, or less.

My immigration reform plan does not favor illegal immigrants. Anyone may apply for a guest-worker visa at the new Ellis Island Centers; indeed, the plan may actually work to the advantage of applicants who have never violated our immigration laws, since guest-worker visas will be issued only outside the U.S.

There will initially be no cap on the number of visas that can be issued; for the first three years, the market and the needs of U.S. employers will set the limit on the number of guest workers. This is necessary in order to provide the incentive for illegal aliens in this country to self-deport and come back legally. After three years, however, a reasonable limit on the number of these "W" visas will be determined by the Department of Labor, based on employment statistics, employer needs and other research.

Nevertheless, there will be a limit on the amount of time guest workers can spend in this country. They would be allowed to renew their visas, but only for a period of up to six years. And in order to receive their first renewal, they would be required to study English and pass an English proficiency class.

After six years, a guest worker must decide whether to return home or seek citizenship. But he will do so under the normal rules and regulations of our naturalization laws. There is no path to citizenship in my bill.

Lastly, my immigration bill includes strict employer enforcement. It does so by incorporating the employer-enforcement provisions contained in the House-passed Border Protection bill. Thus, there will be established a nationwide electronic employment-verification system through which employers will confirm the legality of each prospective and current employee.

Employers who choose to operate outside the system would face stiff fines. Once the new enforcement system is in place, jobs for illegal aliens will dry up.

As the grandson of an Irish immigrant, I believe in the ideals enshrined on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. America always has been, and always will be, a welcoming nation, welcoming under the law any and all with courage enough to come here. But a nation without borders is not a nation, and across this country Americans are anxious about our borders.

Every night Americans see news images of people crossing the border illegally. They hear of people paying thousands of dollars to "coyotes" to smuggle them into the country; they worry that drugs will make their way into the hands of their children more readily. And they rightly fear that our porous borders make it more likely that terrorists will cross with deadly intentions against our families.

I believe that my Border Integrity and Immigration Reform Act is a solution that those opposed to amnesty and those who propose a guest-worker program can both support. It offers a solution that those calling for the humane treatment of illegal immigrants can embrace.

And I believe that this solution is one the American people can embrace. This is the real rational middle ground."

[mrajatish]

How will this so called "middle" ground benefit people working legally here? Are they always going to be pushed to the "muddle"?

[for_gc]

We can only hope that legal provisions survive or most of them anyways.

[posmd]

Looks like the fact that Legal immigration to the USA is difficult is an eye opener for this OP/ED writer for the washington post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...061100921.html

Perhaps someone can invite her to join IV and let her know that we are fighting for people like her girlfriend.

[optimizer]

We have seen so many articles in the media which talk both about legal and illegal immigration.

But here is the article about "Why Startups Condense America!"
http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html

It starts with US being the top most country promoting immigration, and then at the bottom mentioning "How To Do Better" by promoting legal immigration.
I have copied that part here:

Immigration

The other place you could beat the US would be with smarter immigration policy. There are huge gains to be made here. Silicon valleys are made of people, remember.

Like a company whose software runs on Windows, those in the current Silicon Valley are all too aware of the shortcomings of the INS, but there's little they can do about it. They're hostages of the platform.

America's immigration system has never been well run, and since 2001 there has been an additional admixture of paranoia. What fraction of the smart people who want to come to America can even get in? I doubt even half. Which means if you made a competing technology hub that let in all smart people, you'd immediately get more than half the world's top talent, for free.

US immigration policy is particularly ill-suited to startups, because it reflects a model of work from the 1970s. It assumes good technical people have college degrees, and that work means working for a big company.

If you don't have a college degree you can't get an H1B visa, the type usually issued to programmers. But a test that excludes Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell can't be a good one. Plus you can't get a visa for working on your own company, only for working as an employee of someone else's. And if you want to apply for citizenship you daren't work for a startup at all, because if your sponsor goes out of business, you have to start over.

American immigration policy keeps out most smart people, and channels the rest into unproductive jobs. It would be easy to do better. Imagine if, instead, you treated immigration like recruiting-- if you made a conscious effort to seek out the smartest people and get them to come to your country.

A country that got immigration right would have a huge advantage. At this point you could become a mecca for smart people simply by having an immigration system that let them in.

[nyte_crawler]

Hastert Deals Blow to Immigration Bill

By SUZANNE GAMBOA
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 13, 2006; 7:57 PM

WASHINGTON -- Hopes for a quick compromise on immigration were dealt a blow Tuesday after House Speaker Dennis Hastert said he wanted to take a "long look" at a Senate bill offering possible citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants.

Hastert said hearings on the Senate bill should be held before appointing anyone to a House-Senate committee to negotiate a compromise immigration bill. Later, he said he was unsure what the House's next move would be.

"We're going to take a long look at it," Hastert said late Tuesday.

House Majority Leader John Boehner agreed. "I think we should know clearly what's in the Senate bill," Boehner said. But he added there are lots of ways to understand its contents.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, also scheduled a hearing for Monday to review provisions in the bill requiring employers to verify that their workers are legal.

Cornyn said he opposes a provision allowing workers to use up to 20 documents to verify they are legal workers. Also, the Department of Homeland Security has raised concerns about how quickly it must have in place an electronic system that employers will use to verify their workers legal status, Cornyn's spokesman Don Stewart said.

"This will give us a chance to look at it in more detail," Cornyn said.

Sending a bill that has already passed the Senate to hearings would be a highly unusual move and make completing a final bill before Congress goes on its summer recess in August far less likely. Disagreement on procedural issue has kept negotiations from starting, but there were hopes that could be resolved this week.

"It's an obvious retreat from where we are," said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

The Senate passed a sweeping immigration bill nearly three weeks ago. The bill offers most illegal immigrants in the country and future guest workers a path to citizenship.

Last December, the House passed a bill focused on enforcement. It doesn't offer eventual citizenship to illegal immigrants or create a guest worker program. There are many other significant differences in the bills.

The day the Senate bill was approved, Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. said waiting to negotiate a final bill would be "irresponsible." Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, echoed his comments a day later, saying voters should be able to assess when they go to the ballot box in November how their lawmakers did on the issue.

Rep. Lamar Smith, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said holding hearings on the Senate bill makes "great sense."

The recent election victory of Republican Brian Bilbray, who made tough anti-immigration measures a centerpiece of his campaign, "changed a lot of people's thinking on the issue," he said. "It shows how politically advantageous it is to talk about the issue and what you would do and what the federal government should do."

Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., urged Hastert to drop any plans for hearings.

"Hearings might be beneficial if there was a lack of attention or knowledge on this issue in the House, but that's certainly not the case," Flake said in a statement.

Flake sponsored an early version of the Senate bill with Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., who also called for the bill to move forward.

"Only a small, vocal faction wants to stop a sensible guest-worker program and ignore the reality of the 11 million undocumented living in the country now," Kolbe said in a statement. "We must not let any delays impede our progress toward solving this problem."

[indianindian2006]

http://www.news8austin.com/content/y...sp?ArID=164079

[apnair2002]

http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds...ap2813148.html

[tdasara]

http://www.informationweek.com/story...leID=188703365

[indianindian2006]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/n...governors.html

[indianindian2006]

http://www.cfbf.com/agalert/AgAlertS...42CE9FA43902DC