Dear Readers:  

In my last Openers, I presented a scenario where the Democrats would bring back a major immigration reform bill this year. The idea would be to cause one of the following:  

-         John McCain would support the measure and be forced to confront angry members of his party, causing a public fight with his party and fomenting division

-         McCain would oppose the measure, be labeled a "flip-flopper" and alienate Latino voters

-         GOP leaders would decide that a public debate on the issue will hurt their presidential candidate and quickly and quietly broker a deal to get the subject behind them  

In any case, the Democrats could find pushing immigration legislation again delivers political dividends.  

I received a number of comments from people who agreed and who disagreed. One of the more interesting responses was very public. Stephen Dinan of the Washington Times actually wrote a column discussing my piece. You can find the Dinan column at http://video1.washingtontimes.com/dinan/2008/02/mccain_nomination_could_give_d.html.

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This past week on my blog at ILW.com, I featured individuals in my Immigrant of the Day column who were nominated for Academy Awards. On Sunday night’s Oscar broadcast, foreign nationals did extraordinarily well winning in 13 out of 26 categories including all of the acting categories. That’s the first time that has happened since 1964. As Jay Leno joked, will this mean Lou Dobbs will call for a wall to be built around Hollywood ?  

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In firm news, I am profiled in an article in the next issue of the ABA Journal. The article is now online at http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/ahead_of_the_curve/#When:15:41:00Z .

Also, I was a speaker at two conferences last week. I participated in an AILA national teleconference on Social Security no match letters. We expect the new version of the no match rule to be released in the next few days to weeks. I was also a panelist at the Tennessee Bar Association’s 2008 Legal Tech program in Nashville . I’ll be a speaker as well in two weeks at the ABA Techshow in Chicago . You can find more information about Techshow at http://www.techshow.com.  

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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.

Regards, 

Greg Siskind