Dear Readers:

The chaos continues for the nation's immigration lawyers and, of course, their clients. We are getting ready to go into the next round of Special Registration. The INS is in its final month of life and we still do not have a clear picture of the new immigration system to be administered by the Department of Homeland Security. Security checks are still causing enormous delays for many visa applicants. And, of course, we have a looming war and warnings of terrorist attacks which could have an enormous impact on the immigration system. Which US consulates will close? Will airport inspection procedures change? And what about the threats? The 9/11 attacks have dramatically changed the immigration system. Would another attack at the hands of foreign nationals result in an extreme anti-immigrant backlash?

At the very beginning of my legal career I practiced corporate law and was ready to quit due to boredom. I felt like the practice was largely repetitive and the issues were not particularly compelling. Then I found immigration law. I told friends at the time that I liked the fact that every week changes came in the immigration system that affected my cases. And that makes the practice more interesting and challenging. That is more the case today than it ever has been.

This week there is quite a variety of news. There are new scandals at the immigration agencies. A consular official in Prague pled guilty to fraudulently issuing visas. And in Alberta, an INS official was deported back to the US for a form of corruption that is the first for which we have ever reported. The official worked at the Calgary Airport and was paid off by one company to delay the entrances of that company's competitor's employees. One of the company's affected actually went out of business because its employees could not get to the US to service its American customers.

I also am including the full text of the American Immigration Lawyers Association's comment on the new J-1 waiver program for physicians that is being sponsored by the US Department of Health and Human Services. I co-wrote this comment along with J-1 waiver gurus Robert Aronson and Bob Deasy.

We also include this week the first of what we hope will be many articles from tax lawyer Stephen Weiser in Denver. Stephen concentrates on tax issues for international clients and we believe he will have a lot of useful information to impart to our readers.

In firm news, I was interviewed for the latest issue of the Memphis Business Journal regarding various changes in nurse visa procedures. To read the article, you can go to http://www.visalaw.com/news. There you will also see a recent interview with me on Slate.com, the popular online news site as well as several other articles published in the last several weeks.

By the way, we hope you like the look of this week's issue. We are now publishing the newsletter in two formats - formatted HTML and plain text. If you are receiving this week's issue in HTML we hope you find the format more attractive and readable. If you are getting this in text and want to switch to HTML, you can click on the link at the bottom of this email or go to www.topica.com and log into your subscription page for our newsletter to change your format preference.

As always, we remind readers that we're lawyers who make our living representing immigration clients. We would love to discuss becoming your law firm. Just go to http://www.visalaw.com/intake.html to request an appointment or call us at 800-748-3819 or 901-682-6455.

Regards,

Greg Siskind