Dear Readers:

This week we include an interesting commentary from regular contributor Gary Endelman. Gary’s columns always provide food for thought because they examine the bigger picture issues involved with immigration. So often it is easy to get bogged down in the here and now of the policy debate and lose sight of the fact that what we do today has an impact on our country for years to come.

Gary looks this week at how immigration as well as outsourcing can, in fact, help us address a potentially massive problem we will be facing in the years to come – the aging of our population and the coming shortage of younger workers to take the place of workers who will be retiring. This is a worldwide phenomenon. But the US is at least better prepared to handle this – at least according to Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan – than most of our competitor countries who have more restrictive immigration policies than America.

Certainly, the recent up tick in employment has given fuel to the anti-immigration forces in the country. But speak to sociologists and economists monitoring the future of the American workforce and you’ll hear precisely the opposite concerns – how will the US deal with a coming massive worker shortage. The key will be to figure out how to keep the best jobs for American workers and either outsource the less desirable ones or find immigrant workers to fill the gap.

I’ve been on the road of late with four trips in four weeks. Some of the trips have been to deliver talks to various groups on US immigration. Others have been to visit clients and prospective clients. This week I’m off to San Antonio, Texas for the mid-year meeting of the American Bar Association. I serve on the governing council of the ABA’s Law Practice Management Section as well as Chair of its book publishing program. I’ll also be speaking at a continuing legal education program on trade show marketing for lawyers at the meeting. For those attorney readers in the San Antonio-area, I encourage you to come to the Law Practice Management Section’s events and check out how the ABA can help your practice. You can learn more by going to www.abanet.org.

Finally, as always, we remind readers that we're lawyers who make our living representing immigration clients and employers seeking to comply with immigration laws. 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 800-343-4890 or 901-682-6455.

Regards,

Greg Siskind