Month: January 2008

According to an article on www.chron.com:  “In the closing days of the New Hampshire campaign, Romney aired TV attack ads criticizing McCain for advocating “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. But independent New Hampshire pollster Dick Bennett said that the commercials backfired on Romney.”

Senator John McCain won the NH primary with Mitt Romney coming in second.  Romney will undoubtedly tone up his rhetoric on illegal immigration as he becomes increasingly desperate to win the nomination.  So far Romney’s “amnesty” talk has  lost him both Iowa and New Hampshire.

It will be a long haul, however if McCain wins the nomination, it goes to show that despite the media hype, Americans will decide who will be their president based on bread and butter issues rather than the candidate’s stance on immigration.

According to an editorial that appeared on washingtonpost.com:  “MITT ROMNEY, struggling to revive his floundering candidacy and to stiff-arm a surging Sen. John McCain in New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary, has pushed his plan for dealing with illegal immigration to center stage. Unfortunately, it is no plan at all. That has become clear in recent days, and particularly at the GOP candidates’ debate Saturday, when Mr. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, contradicted himself repeatedly, as well as his own TV advertisements, while stumbling in rhetorical figure-eights around the immigration debate.”

Candidates should try to stay away from the immigration issue as any strong position will eventually come back to bite them.

The USCIS has released its latest Application and Receipting Update.

According to an article on mercurynews.com: “Opening the door to technical professionals is key to keeping the United States competitive with fast-rising economies such as China and India. In many areas of math, science and engineering, at least half of the post-graduate degrees at U.S. universities are earned by foreign nationals. It makes no sense for the United States to educate foreign scientists and engineers and then send them home to compete against American tech companies.”

According to an article on chicagotribune.com:  “Immigrant bashing just does not move votes. The 2006 elections were a disaster for anti-immigrant demagoguery. Not only did the issue fail to stave off the Republican loss of the House and Senate, but leading Republican anti-immigrant campaigners such as Reps. J.D. Hayworth of Arizona and John Hostettler of Indiana and Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania all lost their races. And in a telling portent of the future, Latino support for the GOP dropped to 26 percent from 44 percent.”

According to an interesting article on www.chron.com:  “A number of voters interviewed said that while they continued to disagree with McCain on immigration, they appreciated his honesty and liked his stance on other issues, particularly foreign policy…The immigration issue also failed to hurt Mike Huckabee, who won the GOP caucuses in Iowa Thursday despite being attacked for backing college scholarships to illegal immigrants while Arkansas’ governor.”

If candidates’ pro-immigrant stances fail to deter GOP caucus-goers in the primaries where anti-immigration feelings are most prevalent, it should have even less of an effect in the general elections.  On the other hand, those candidates who demonize immigrants to move ahead in the primaries will have a great deal of trouble garnering the Hispanic vote in the general election.  I believe that those voters who have family members or friends who have been affected by the recent anti-immigration movement will hold a grudge against those candidates who support the current climate.  Those voters who can be swayed (independents or undecided voters as opposed to hard-core Republicans), who may oppose allowing any earned legalization for the undocumented, will probably vote for candidates on bread and butter issues rather than on immigration.

My advice would be for the candidates to steer clear of the topic of immigration whenever possible as there is no winning political position on this volatile issue.

According to a USCIS Press Release:  “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that suspension of premium processing services for religious worker (R-1) visa petitions will be extended until July 8, 2008.   A previous six-month suspension was announced on June 18, 2007.”

According to an article on www.newsweek.com:  “The importance of a reformed immigration policy in a broader homeland security strategy has made it a major subject of debate in the 2008 presidential election. This debate escalated recently surrounding the controversial immigration reform legislation that would have granted temporary guest status to millions of illegal immigrants. That bill stalled in the Senate June 7, 2007 after a cloture motion was rejected, although nearly all of the presidential candidates currently serving as senators voted for that motion.”

The USCIS has received a sufficient number of petitions to reach the congressionally mandated H-2B cap for the second half of Fiscal Year 2008 (FY2008). USCIS is hereby notifying the public that January 2, 2008 is the “final receipt date” for new H-2B worker petitions requesting employment start dates prior to October 1, 2008. The “final receipt date” is the date on which USCIS determines that it has received enough cap-subject petitions to reach the limit of 33,000 H-2B workers for the second half of FY2008.