1.
Openers
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.
*****
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
*****
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
*****
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,