Dear Readers:  

Last week I told you about my planned trip to Washington and New York . The week turned out to be very interesting. On Tuesday, I visited Springfield , Massachusetts where I visited with a local refugee services agency affiliated with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, on whose board of directors I serve. We visited the homes of refugees from Somalia and Sudan and also visited the Simmons Mattress Factory in Springfield which has an innovative program to provide training and good jobs to refugees.  

Then I went down to Washington and it was lobby, lobby, lobby. I attended a reception for Representative Zoe Lofgren, the California Democrat now charged with chairing the House Immigration Subcommittee. I did have the opportunity to tell Ms. Lofgren about the problem elderly refugees face of losing their Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits if they cannot become citizens within seven years. For many elderly residents having difficulty learning English, the loss of this income can be devastating.  

Later on Wednesday, I attended a kick off meeting for Immigrants’ List, a new political action committee. Modeled on Emily’s List, the pro-choice PAC to support female candidates, Immigrants’ List (www.immigrantslist.org) supports pro-immigrant candidates and works to defeat the anti-immigrants. The work they are doing looks very interesting and I wish them much success.  

Thursday was Lobby Day for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. I had the opportunity to visit with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and Tennessee Senators Alexander and Corker, both Republicans. I visited the offices of my new Congressman Steve Cohen and West Tennessee Congressman John Tanner.  

Friday I lobbied on physician issues for the FMG Taskforce, the coalition of physician immigration law firms, a group that I co-chair. We met with folks from Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn of Texas and Senator Conrad of North Dakota regarding extending the Conrad 30 program and creating new incentives to encourage H-1B physicians to work in medically underserved communities.  

Unfortunately, I got caught in the bad weather on Friday night and my flight was canceled. So I found myself driving back 900 miles to Memphis . A little bleary-eyed after the trip, but revved up for the legislation that will soon come.  

My sense is that we are getting closer to agreement on immigration reform and despite the pessimism of many, I feel like we’ll get a bill this year. It won’t please everyone, but it will certainly improve the lots of millions of people in the country.  

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Many lawyers around the country are scrambling to get their H-1B applications ready to go for the April 2^nd deadline to get applications in for the 2008 fiscal year that starts October 1^st. When I heard estimates that the cap would be reached much earlier this year (last year numbers were available until June 1^st), I took notice. I was amazed that folks were estimating April 15^th as the date we would run out. Now we’re hearing that the numbers may be totally depleted on the very first day! The logistics will be astounding. Will the mail services be able to properly deliver as many as 100,000 packages on one day? Will USCIS be able to properly log in the applications? How will they possibly meet premium processing deadlines? And if the number of applications goes over 65,000, how will the lottery work to pick out the applications that will be processed?  

Hopefully, Congress will take note when the cap is hit and realize that the situation has become absolutely ridiculous and needs repair. Certainly, many companies are considering outsourcing operations in order to avoid having to deal with this mess.  

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In firm news, I have just been tapped to host a blog at ILW.com, the popular immigration law portal. I’ll be using the blog mainly to post items and comments I think are unavailable elsewhere on the web especially behind the scenes information on immigration legislation in Congress. You can find the new blog at http://blogs.ilw.com/gregsiskind/.  

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Finally, as always, if you are interested in becoming a Siskind Susser Bland client, please feel welcome to email me at gsiskind@visalaw.com or contact us at 800-748-3819 to arrange for a telephone or in person consultation with one of our lawyers.

Kind regards,

Greg Siskind

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