FLORIDA SENATE CANDIDATE TRIES TO STRADDLE IMMIGRATION ISSUE

Marco Rubio has a challenge. He needs to appeal to conservatives in order to drum up enough votes to defeat popular Governor Charlie Crist in next year's Florida GOP primary. Then he has to run back to the middle to appeal to an increasingly liberal Florida general electorate. When it comes to immigration, he needs to come off as tough on illegally present workers. And then he somehow has to seem reasonable on the issue by the time he gets to the November election. The Miami Herald reports on how this is going to be a tough task.

Comments

[George Chell]

From another topic from Jim...

"Geraldo leaving GOP altogether would be cherry on top for Ann Coulter as accdg. to her, Geraldo is a digrace to the Republican party."

Geraldo has the wrong color and at least Looser/Loose Cannon Lou will be the right color!

[gg]

Lou gets the boot from CNN... Tonight is the last show...

[Sid]

Greg,

What is your interpretation of the AC21 changes about spillover rules? Should it done every quarter or only in the last quarter? Does the law leave enough wiggle room to do it either way?

Thanks

[George Chell]

http://www.ilw.com/articles/2009,1111-johnson.shtm

[Adi]

"it just goes to show that when it comes to immigration it takes an act of god to get something done...."
Or President Bush with Republican majority. I think Bush made a mistake to focus on social security rather than immigration during his second term. During his term nurses were given special quota. Geez I miss him now!!!!

[Another voice]

It's going to be hard to do CIR with 10.2% un-employment, and the closer we get to the 2010 election its even more impossible. Who knows what will happen in those elections in 2010, if the republicans gain ground on the dems chances of CIR are even slimmer...it does not look good for immigrants any way you slice it!!!! We all thought it was a slam dunk with Obama and the super majority in Congress for the dems, it just goes to show that when it comes to immigration it takes an act of god to get something done....

[George Chell]

Just as I said earlier, there would be no CIR until 2011...and now there wont be one if Grassley, Sanders and Durbin drive more jobs in corporations such as yahoo abroad, resulting in a spike in unemployment and a vicious circle..restrictions..jobs go abroad..higher unemployment...more restrictions..and more jobs go abroad..even higher unemployment..happened in Germany in the early part of this decade until Merkel showed some courage...it could happen here and end Obama's Presidency. Grassley-Sanders and the oil prices are the twin threats to the economic recovery and lower unemployment!

[Jim]

With the possibility that Health Care Reform not being completed until early next year or before Christmas at the very earliest I do not think CIR will even be taken up next year being too close to the elections.

Congress should now consider piece-meal immigration bills even as just a stop-gap measure until CIR will be taken up in 2011.

Let's be realistic here. If CIR is not even started to be taken this year then it will not be taken up in 2010. That's just the reality that even Ron Gotcher and other immigration lawyers in touch with reality have deduced.

Recapture of visas and visas for nurses are badly needed ASAP.

Nurses in particular who mostly undergo consular processing has been waiting for 3-5 years already and many are starting to go to other countries such as Canada, Australia, UAE and other middle-east countries. With HC reform passing in one form or another (it's inevitable) and the US recovering in 2010, more nurses and primary physicians will be needed and the timing couldn't be uglier as the nurses who have waited for years will probably have given up waiting and decided to go to another country instead as previously mentioned.

And the very long process of hiring, petitioning and waiting in queue will start again. That is if there will be nurses even applying for the US nursing exams. Foreign nurses even applying for the US nursing exam and being licensed on each State has dropped very significantly because of word of the previous batches that has been waiting for 3-5 years already.

It's a perfect storm for a HC crisis in 2010. Don't forget about the on-going H1N1 flu pandemic that is expected to extend to early next year of w/c I may add only a few current nurses in the US are even willing to be even vaccinated for and would rather not report for work than get vaccinated.

[George Chell]

Bunch of baloney! Taliban Bob McDonnell never brought up the immigration issue, but he won handily last week here in Virginia. Perhaps Florida has a more racist GOP base than VA, but I doubt it!