Greg Siskind on Immigration Law and Policy

IMMIGRANT OF THE DAY: SAFRA CATZ - BUSINESS LEADER

Israeli-born Safra Catz is the co-president of Oracle Corporation. She also serves as the mega-company's Chief Financial Officer. Catz was honored today by being named to Fortune Magazine's list of the 50 most powerful women in America. According to the magazine:

As Larry Ellison's right-hand woman overseeing day-to-day operations, Catz has led Oracle through more than 40 acquisitions in four years and has helped deliver four years of EPS growth of 20% or more annually. Catz hands off her CFO position on Oct. 1 and will oversee her successor.

AMERICANS LOSE INTEREST IN IMMIGRATION

The number of Americans who think immigration is the country's most serious issue is now down to just 1% and the issue ranks just 12th in order of priority, according to a new DiageoHotline poll of voters. That's less than 1/10th of the number that it was in August 2007 (after the immigration reform bill failed in Congress). At that time, immigration ranked second on the list of issues.

Psstt, members of Congress, I've got a secret to tell you. You can now safely do what you think is best on immigration issues and you don't need to worry about the politics. American voters have moved on. Sure extremists might still flood your switchboard with calls. But there's not going to be any groundswell of support behind them.

IMMIGRANT OF THE DAY: HENRY KISSINGER - STATESMAN

During Friday night's presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, one of the more interesting verbal spars related to whether former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger supported negotiations with Iran and at what level. The fact that 30 years after he held the position, the opinion of Mr. Kissinger is still so important tells something about the man's impact.

Henry Kissinger doesn't really need an introduction. Kissinger's family fled to the United States from Germany in order to escape the Nazi persecution of the Jews in the 1930s. He went on to attend Harvard and then to teach there before being tapped to serve as Richard Nixon's National Security Advisor and later his Secretary of State. As one of the few senior Nixon Administration officials who came away relatively unscaithed from the Watergate scandal, he kept his job in the Ford Administation. Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the 1973 Israel-Arab war.

The 85 year old Kissinger has never left the spotlight and is still very involved in commenting on foreign affairs as was seen from this week's news.

HOW TO LOSE THE HISPANIC VOTE IN 20 SECONDS

The communications director of the local Las Vegas Republican Party office, lost her job today for, among other things, making the following statement:

"We don't want (Hispanics) to become the new African-American community," Lima told The Associated Press. "And that's what the Democratic Party is going to do to them, create more programs and give them handouts, food stamps and checks for this and checks for that. We don't want that."

"I'm very much afraid that the Democratic Party is going to do the same thing that they did with the African-American culture and make them all dependent on the government and we don't want that," she said.

IMMIGRATION HUMOR - GOVERNOR PALIN TALKS ABOUT IMMIGRATION

Here's the fourth segment of Katie Couric's interview with Governor Palin you DIDN'T see. About half way through she talks about getting certain jobs held by foreigners back in the hands of Americans.

RELIGIOUS WORKER PROGRAM EXTENDED BY CONGRESS

The House agreed this evening to S. 3606 to extend the religious worker program to March 6, 2009. The passed bill also requires DHS to issue anti-fraud rules within 30 days and the language seems to require that the regulations be issued before the program extension takes effect. Stay tuned...

CONRAD 30 J-1 PROGRAM EXTENSION TO GO TO PRESIDENT'S DESK

The House and Senate agreed to an extension of the physician immigration program until March 6, 2009. It began its sunset on June 1, 2008 so the need to extend was growing more urgent. Conrad 30 doctors are permitted to remain in the US after their graduate medical training programs end on condition of working in areas considered to be medically underserved. Each state can sponsor up to 30 doctors per year under the program and all 50 states and four US territories have established Conrad programs.

One substantive change in the program that is very helpful. Under current rules, each state has five "flex" slots they can use for facilities that are not in federally designated shortage areas if the state health officer certifies that that the doctor is serving a substantial patient population coming from designated shortage areas. This is often the case for physicians working in regional health facilities or at university hospitals serving large regional populations. Congress doubled the number of Flex slots to 10. The President is expected to sign the bill soon.

SENATE PASSES CONTINUING RESOLUTION EXTENDING E-VERIFY AND EB-5 PROGRAMS

Well, this is likely the end of the road for the Menendez bill until after the election. But it is good news at least for EB-5 and the E-Verify program is going to come up for renewal again in just a few months so the notion of linking E-Verify to the Menendez bill is still on the table. And after the election, the politics are going to get better.

That's why anti-immigrant groups are pushing to get Congress to quickly pass a separate bill reauthorizing E-Verify for several more years. While E-Verify is a program that has problems and more protections are needed for American workers incorrectly flagged by the database, I am not against the program's extension. In fact, I think E-Verify will play an important role in a comprehensively reformed immigration system. But fair is fair and linking a vitally needed legal immigration bill that has been blocked by anti-immigrant members of Congress with a must-pass bill central to the agenda of the anti-immigrant lobby is perfectly reasonable.

KRIKORIAN: HISPANICS, BLACKS AND GAYS CAUSED WAMU BANK COLLAPSE

It's actually fun writing that headline. But that's essentially what he wrote today in his National Review column. My favorite response to this piece of trash comes from the Daily Kos:

Was Washington Mutual Failure Caused By Hispanics Working There?

No. No it wasn't. And if you think that, or even contemplate that seriously for a single moment, you're a f---ing racist of the highest caliber. You are also a tool, an ass, and a moron. You should be banished from anything even remotely resembling "punditry", and set to work picking fleas off zoo animals.

I'm not sure what it's going to take to finally purge conservatives and Republicans of their ingrained belief that every bad thing that ever happens in the world can be traced back to brown people, or black people, or any other of a variety of scary non-whites, but if and when we discover a medical solution we should convert it to enema form and forcibly administer it to every last conservative on the planet.

But at stalwart conservative outlets like the National Review, you can say pretty much anything, especially if you put one of those question marks behind it so it looks like you're neutrally contemplating the question, instead of being correctly embarrassed at being such a gigantic a**hole that you'd bring it up at all.

*****

You know, there's a reason the KKK used to dress up with giant dunce caps on their heads. It's because they're goddamned stupid, and always have been. Always charming to see there's been no leaps in the capacity of conservatives to feel Basic Human Shame in the last fifty years.

There's absolutely nothing that can get these people fired.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR VOICES HEARD IN CONGRESS

My friend Will Coley has produced two very helpful videos explaining how to call your member of Congress - one for the House and one for the Senate. He's urging folks to call regarding HR 1176 and S 3594. You can read more about these bills here.