Dear Readers:

We have been reporting for several weeks on H.R. 418, the Real ID Act. This is another piece of legislation that sounds great at first glance, but then a host of problems are discovered the more you examine it. The bill purports to be about making driver’s licenses harder to fake. That sounds easy to support. But then you learn that the federal government is mandating standards that states must meet without actually providing states with the funding to implement those standards. And states that offer driver’s licenses to people without legal documents will be punished even if the state has made the decision that for public safety reasons they want to ensure that all drivers on the road get licensed. Finally, the rule will make it much more difficult for people with non-immigrant visas to get drivers licenses. They are going to have to reapply every year. If your state is like my home state of Tennessee and has a terribly disorganized and delay-burdened DMV, having to get re-licensed every year will be a major burden for people who are here legally. And it basically takes us to the point of having a national identification card without having any public debate on this highly controversial idea.

The bill also contains harsh provisions that allow judges to dismiss asylum cases based on inconsistencies in the applicant’s testimony even if the applicant had a good reason for being inconsistent and even in the discrepancy is not germane to the main issues in the case. The US has dramatically toughened its rules regarding asylum over the last few years and there is no evidence to support the notion that this change in the law will make us any safer from terrorism.

This week, Margaret Stock writes a guest commentary on another controversial section of the law governing charitable contributions. We also will report on the status of the bill in the Senate. The Senate is not expected to be interested in keeping some of the more controversial sections of the bill, but the politics on the legislation are volatile right now.

We also have an interesting commentary by regular contributor Gary Endelman regarding the interplay between the new PERM program and the rollback in EB-3 numbers. Speaking of EB-3 numbers, the unskilled EB-3 worker category has suddenly backlogged by several years. Applicants in that category need to get their cases filed by the end of the month in order to avoid being stuck waiting to file for several years.

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Regards,

Greg Siskind