Dear Readers:

It was inevitable. If you are like me, you get emails all day long promising you riches if you just provide some helpful assistance to the widow of a miscellaneous dictator or general. Or you get an email with countless other variations on this theme. Personally, I find them somewhat entertaining, though it is sobering to think that people must still be falling for the schemes or they would have just died out by now.

I received an email this week with a new twist, one that is much scarier because it could so easily be believed. Instead of offering a share in riches tucked away in a bank account abroad, the fraudsters have designed an email that informs the reader that they have won the US green card lottery. The mail comes from a spoofed US State Department address and has a lot of official looking details. You may ask yourself how do you make money on claiming someone won the lottery? Well, it is quite simple. “Winners” are requested to wire money to a bank account in order to begin processing of their case.

The problem is made worse by the fact that more than 10 million people around the world apply for the green card lottery every year. And beginning this past year, all entries were made online and email addresses are provided. Couple that with the fact that the US State Department only notifies winners by mail and refuses to confirm that a person has won or lost and you have a natural little gold mine for those would commit fraud.

The State Department could easily nip this in the bud and also solve other problems associated with the secretive way it deals with notifying winners. Now that cases are submitted online, why not issue an instant tracking number that entrants could then use to check online whether they have won the lottery or not. This would save the State Department from having to deal with the astronomical number of inquiries it receives each year from people wondering whether they won or not. Right now, applicants are told to watch their mailboxes and that’s their only option. But if someone won and never received the package – they moved, the mail got lost or was stolen, etc. – they would have a way of learning of the problem. And the State Department could then provide a mechanism for providing duplicate application materials.

My guess is that the Department of State will be forced to do something like this when victims of scams like the one we report on this week begin to surface in the media. But a solution like the one I suggest would also result in long term savings and better customer service.

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We’re in an election year and lofty proposals to deal with immigration are floating around as in years past. This week we report on John Kerry’s proposal for a major immigration relief program that is as ambitious as the one proposed by President Bush earlier this year. Immigration is also, as always, a wedge issue that some politician use to stir up fear and garner votes accordingly. Political parties do not necessarily provide a reliable indicator of where a politician is likely to stand.

Pro-business Republicans like President Bush and John McCain have been out front promoting legalization programs designed to ensure that there is a legal way to connect employers facing legitimate worker shortages with willing foreign workers. They’ve got a number of allies in the Democratic Party.

On the other side, you have the xenophobic wing of the Republican Party represented by people like Tom Tancredo of Colorado and House Immigration Subcommittee Chair John Hostettler of Indiana. They garner support from folks on the left like Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut who have jumped on the anti-outsourcing bandwagon and are attacking H-1B and L-1 visa holders.

A lot depends on who is in the candidate’s base of supporters and who provides the funding for the political war chest of a particular politician. A candidate representing “white flight” suburban voters who fear the immigrant hordes will likely take a hostile position. If a candidate represents a district comprised of a significant number of new Americans, don’t bet on opposition to an amnesty. On the other hand, a lot of politicians form an opinion based on nothing more than their hunch of how voters will feel about a particular issue. These legislators are willing to keep an open mind and should they hear from constituents who can provide real world illustrations of the contributions of immigrants in their own districts, they often are willing to listen.

That has especially been demonstrated to me this year as I have spent considerable time working with clients to advocate for the physician immigration bill working its way through Congress. Many of the legislators who we have initially contacted were inclined to vote against the bill. But after we have been able to make the case that these physicians are needed to deal with a critical doctor shortage in this country – particularly in rural areas – then several have changed their minds and even co-sponsored the legislation.

The lessen for our US citizen readers is that you should not just assume that grassroots lobbying is meaningless. A visit to Washington is particularly helpful. I would guess that one visit by a constituent is worth a thousand letters. Of course, those letters as well as phone calls are also critical and anti-immigration groups know this all too well. So visit sites like www.aila.org, the home of the American Immigration Lawyers Association to learn more about where advocacy efforts are needed. And exercise your rights as Americans to let your legislators know where you stand and what you believe they should do as your representatives.

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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 800-748-3819 or 901-682-6455.

Regards,

Greg Siskind