Greg Siskind spoke on using the web in an immigration practice at the annual Immigration and Nationality Law Seminar sponsored by the University of Texas School of Law in Austin. The conference attracts lawyers from across Texas and several other states. Click here to see the presentation.

Attorney Greg Siskind and Siskind Susser staff member Gilda Bollwerk co-authored an article in the October 24 issue of La Prensa Latina offering tips for affording an immigration attorney. Click here to read it.

The latest monthly issue of Siskind's Immigration Professional is now online. Click here to read it.

We've posted the latest processing times for the Vermont and California Service Centers. Click here to see them.

Normally, the second half of October in a presidential election year means Congress is not going to be busy. They’re typically totally consumed with the election and have recessed by this point. That is largely true this year, but there are bills still hanging out there that could be passed this year either in a special session of Congress right before the election or in a “lame duck” session in the weeks after the election.

One bill that is still being addressed is H.R. 10, the bill implementing recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Were the provisions in the bill limited to this task, however, it would not be so controversial. But anti-immigrant forces in Congress have been able to slip in a number of provisions that take the bill way beyond what the 9/11 Commission envisioned.
Both Houses of Congress have passed a version of the bill. The House version is the much more anti-immigrant of the two. According to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the House version would result in
a radical expansion of drive-by-deportations,
heightened burdens for asylum seekers,
repatriation of foreign nationals to countries where they will be tortured,
more mandatory indefinite detentions,
limitations on First Amendment rights for non-citizens,
suspension of the Great Writ of habeas corpus for the first time since the Civil War, and
restrictions on driver's licenses and consular identification cards
From time to time we urge our tens of thousands of readers to take a stand on an immigration issue. It has been a while since there was a bill that warranted urgent action. But H.R. 10 is one of them. Please contact your members of Congress. AILA has put up an excellent web page to help you do this. Go to http://capwiz.com/aila2/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=6540936 to get information on how to contact your member of Congress and see talking points for your letter.

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We’ve received word that the H-2B cap for fiscal year 2005 is close to being hit. If you’re planning on filing an H-2B case, you better plan on doing it soon.

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I hope many of you had the opportunity to see the CNN special “Immigrant Nation, Divided Country” yesterday. The hour-long special was hosted by Maria Hinojosa, one of the nation’s best reporters on the American Hispanic community. The story was balanced in its coverage interviewing immigrant families, their employers, those who oppose giving rights to immigrants and those in their communities who provide services – doctors, teachers, etc. The special will be re-broadcast next Saturday night, October 23rd, at 6 am eastern time, 8 pm eastern time and 11 pm eastern time.

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Many of you have been asking when PERM is coming for labor certification-based green card cases. We still don’t have an answer, but we do have some hints based on a memorandum released by the Department of Labor instructing state workforce agencies on what to expect over the course of this fiscal year. We report on this news this week.

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In firm news, my law partner David Jones and I have written one of our regular Tech Notes columns for Immigration Law Today, the bimonthly magazine of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. You can see the article at www.visalaw.com/news on our web site. AILA’s magazine is superb and one more reason why our immigration lawyer readers out there should join (though I suspect most of you already are members). You can find information on joining AILA at www.aila.org. The rest of you should check out the site anyway because there is a lot of excellent information on grass roots activism and how the average person can have a voice in the national immigration debate.

Here's the table of contents for this week's Siskind's Immigration Bulletin. Click here to get to any of the articles.

1. Openers

2. The ABC’s of Immigration: Adoption and Orphans

3. Ask Visalaw.com

4. Border and Enforcement News

5. News From The Courts

6. Government Processing Times

7. News Bytes

8. International Roundup

9. Legislative Update

10. State Department Visa Bulletin

11. Controversial Bill H.R. 10 Passes With Immigration Provisions

12. DHS Extends TPS Designation for Burundi

13. Labor Department Releases Plans for PERM Transition

Attorney Greg Siskind and Siskind Susser staff member Gilda Bollwerk co-authored an article in the October 17 issue of La Prensa Latina outlining more factors to be aware of when hiring an immigration attorney (en Espanol). Click here to read it.

We've posted the latest processing times for the Nebraska and Texas Service Centers. Click here to see them.

Attorneys Greg Siskind and David Jones wrote a column in the October issue of Immigration Law Today, AILA's monthly magazine, explaining how Wi-Fi can make an attorney more productive outside of the office. Click here to read it.

Siskind Susser and Visalaw.com were mentioned in a recent article in Law Practice Management, a publication of the American Bar Association. The article, which discusses Web sites that are convenient to clients, calls Visalaw.com the "granddaddy of law firm Web sites." Click here to read it.

We've posted the latest processing times for the Vermont, California and Nebraska Service Centers and the National Benefits Center in Missouri. Click here to see them.

We've posted the State Department Visa Bulletin for November 2004. Click here to read it.

With all the bad news on immigration in Congress over the last year, I’m happy to report on some good news. Congress is very close to passing a physician immigration bill that will make a number of improvements to the current system for J-1 waiver processing. In my role as chair of the National Healthcare Access Coalition, a group of immigration law firms and health care employers interested in physician immigration, I’ve been very involved with the drafting of the bill.

My role in lobbying for the bill has led me to deliberately keep quiet in this newsletter on the progress of the bill. Much of my work has been behind the scenes. But at this point, the bill has made enough progress that I’m comfortable letting readers know what to expect.

As many of you know, the Conrad 30 J-1 waiver program for physicians that allows state health agencies to sponsor physicians had a renewal date of June 1st. Once June 1, 2004 passed, only physicians already in the US training at that point could apply for Conrad waivers of the J-1 home residency requirement. That created a need for legislation to extend the bill. It also created an opportunity to make some fixes to the J-1 waiver program in order to better match needed physicians with communities across the country.

The bill has now passed the House (H.R. 4453) and has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee (S.2302) with approval by the Senate expected shortly after the election. The bill is expected to be signed by the President. There is still a remote possibility the legislation will be derailed, but that is not likely since the bill enjoys strong bipartisan support.

So what will change? First and foremost, the Conrad program will continue for two more years. Other important changes are the following:

State and Federal agency waiver applicants will be exempt from the H-1B numerical cap
Each state will be able to have the flexibility to use five waivers per year for applicants taking jobs outside of federally designated medical shortage areas IF they can demonstrate that they will actually be serving people who live in shortage areas.
Both State and Federal agencies can sponsor specialists (only state agencies and the Veterans Administration can do so now).

The bill will have a major impact by paving the way for many more specialists to work around the country. The Delta Regional Authority is expected to be the first Federal agency to take advantage of the new law. The expansion of the H-1B cap exemption to Federal waivers is also important since the H-1B cap has been reached and Federal waiver programs have been hampered by not being able to offer physicians the ability to actually work in their sponsoring communities.

Thanks to all of those reading this newsletter who have played a role in working on this legislation. I look forward to reporting soon that it has become law. The next big health care issue to tackle is the reaching of the EB-3 cap (expected in early 2005) and the backlogging of green cards for employment green card holders. This is going to have a major impact on nurses who rely on this category to enter the US. The US lacks an appropriate non-immigrant visa for nurses and this news is likely to cause major problems for employers of foreign nurses.

Here's the table of contents for this week's Siskind's Immigration Bulletin. Click here to get to any of the articles.

1. Openers
2. The ABC’s of Immigration: The H-1B Cap
3. The ABC’s of Immigration: The Diversity Visa 2006 Green Card Lottery
4. Ask Visalaw.com
5. Border and Enforcement News
6. News From The Courts
7. Government Processing Times
8. News Bytes
9. International Roundup
10. Legislative Update
11. Campaign 2004
12. Guest Column: Security and Sanctuary, By Jerome Teller and Leonard Glickman
13. Bill Creating First Immigrant Consultant Standards Signed by Governor Pataki
14. Federal Court Forces DOJ to Disclose Rationale for Empowering Local Police to Handle Non-criminal Immigration Matters
15. House to Vote on the "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act"

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