President Barack Obama on Friday signed a bill directing $600 million more to securing the U.S.-Mexico border, a modest election-year victory that underscores his failure so far to deliver an overhaul of immigration law from Congress.

Obama signed the bill Friday in a low-key Oval Office ceremony alongside Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. There were cameras present, but no reporters. The action came a day after the Senate convened in special session during its summer recess to pass the bill.

“Look, only Congress can pass a bill,” Napolitano said. “The president can advocate. He can get them to the table, as he has in the Roosevelt Room upstairs. He can implore. He can provide ideas. He can agree to a framework, as he already has. He can give a major address that spells out what’s needed in a bill, but only Congress can pass a bill.”

The new law will pay for the hiring of 1,000 more Border Patrol agents to be deployed at critical areas, as well as more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. It provides for new communications equipment and greater use of unmanned surveillance drones. The Justice Department gets more money to help catch drug dealers and human traffickers.

“Efforts to overhaul our broken immigration system have once again taken a back seat to appeasing anti-immigrant xenophobes, as Congress passed another dramatic escalation in border enforcement with very little evidence that past escalations have been effective,” said Margaret Moran, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

More on this

Obama’s Statement on Passing the Border Security Bill

USA Today

At a time when the prospects for immigration overhaul seem most dim, supporters have unleashed a secret weapon: a group of influential evangelical Christian leaders.

For more on this, read the story.

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If you like our Blog, sign up to receive it through email on our Blog page along with  our other free newsletters, podcast and special Client Alerts.  You can also follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn (see links on the blog for signup).

If this is your first time visiting us, Immigration Solutions provides US and global visa services to individuals and employers throughout the USA and abroad.  We specialize in business immigration and have a depth of experience in the IT, healthcare, arts & entertainment sectors, amongst others.  We additionally provide employer compliance consulting services on proper I-9 (Employment Eligibility Verification) auditing, training, and work with our clients to develop compliant immigration policies and procedures.  We offer these services, as well, to government contractors and advise on FAR E-Verify enrollment and compliance issues.

Newspapers are reporting today that during the official Q&A session following the  Chicago bid for the Olympic Games, I.O.C. member, Syed Shahid Ali, from  Pakistan , asked President Obama how smooth it would be for foreigners to enter the United States for the Olympic Games because doing so can sometimes be “a rather harrowing experience.”

While this I.O.C. member’s concerns raise a red flag about the need for a change in our immigration
policies, a litany of voices have been warning for years that the  U.S. is slowly adopting an anti-visitor policy that is harming business, higher education and families. Stories in the press and report after report have all highlighted how our broken immigration system is hampering our nation’s ability to attract the best and the brightest and stay competitive with other nations around the world.  For more on this

While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.

While acknowledging that the recession makes the political battle more difficult, President Obama plans to begin addressing the country’s immigration system this year, including looking for a path for illegal immigrants to become legal, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.

For more information on Obama to push immigration bill as a key priority:
Read this story from the NYT

President Barack Obama will discuss the mounting drug violence south of the border and immigration during his first visit to Mexico next month to meet with Mexican President Felipe Calderón, the White House said Wednesday.

Obama mentioned the trip during a meeting with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Mexican officials issued a statement that said Obama would be in Mexico April 16-17.

“During the meeting, the president announced that he will travel to Mexico next month to meet with President Calderón to discuss the deep and comprehensive U.S.-Mexico relationship, including how the United States and Mexico can work together to support Mexico‘s fight against drug violence and work toward effective, comprehensive immigration reform.

High-level members of Obama’s administration will go to Mexico before him, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who will be in Mexico City and Monterrey from Wednesday through March 26. Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also are expected to head to Mexico in early April.

Read more information on this article here.

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The President recently commented about the nursing shortage and health service’s providers use of internationally-trained workers to fill the gap in some occupations such as nursing. President Obama said “the notion that we would have to import nurses makes absolutely no sense.”

In response, the AAIHR recognized that the real question surrounding the nursing shortage is healthcare accessibility.

The ideal goals of the Emergency Nurse Supply Relief Act of 2008 is to create funding for nursing schools, and loosen the restrictions surrounding visa quotas. This ideal approach creates a balance of opportunities for a number of interested parties, such as students, schools, employers, internationally trained nurses, domestic nurses, and even more importantly – patients.

For more information on the President’s recent comments:
We share this statement with you from AAIHR.org

The U.S. healthcare system is pinched by a persistent nursing shortage that threatens the quality of patient care even as tens of thousands of people are turned away from nursing schools, according to experts.

The shortage has drawn the attention of President Barack Obama. During a White House meeting on Thursday to promote his promised healthcare system overhaul, Obama expressed alarm over the notion that the United States might have to import trained foreign nurses because so many U.S. nursing jobs are unfilled.

Democratic U.S. Representative Lois Capps, a former school nurse, said meaningful healthcare overhaul cannot occur without fixing the nursing shortage. “Nurses deliver healthcare,” Capps said in a telephone interview.

For more information on the pinch:
Read this story from Yahoo! News

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President Barack Obama tapped a registered nurse, Mary Wakefield, RN, Ph.D. , FAAN, to head the Health Resources and Services Administration(HRSA), an agency that helps deliver health care to the uninsured and underserved in America.

Read more about the article here

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Schedule A Nurse Visas: Improving the Processing

In a very promising development, on December 5, 2008 the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman published it recommendations as to how to improve the processing of Schedule A nurse cases and delivered the 11-page Report to Congress on Monday, December 8, 2008. 

The recommendations are based on a recent nationwide teleconference conducted by the Ombudsman at which Immigration Solutions was present. Immigration Solutions has obtained an advance copy of the report which can be accessed here.

Those of you who have read the monthly newsletters and periodic newsflashes published by Immigration Solutions and who have participated in teleconferences presented by Immigration Solutions, will readily recognize that the report repeats and reinforces everything that Immigration Solutions has discussed and presented over the past few years.

The attached report, while specifically providing recommendations for improving the processing of Schedule A nurse cases, should also be required reading for all persons active in the field of recruiting foreign nurses to the United States. 

The report provides an excellent history of the issues and discusses the effect of the nurse shortage in the United States.  It explains the limited nonimmigrant visa options available to nurses (TN, H-1B and H-1C).  Specifically, the report provides statistics of how few H-1B nurse cases have been approved recently (38 cases in 2006, 66 cases in 2007 and only 136 in 2008).  In addition, the report discusses the immigrant visa process for nurses through Schedule A and the two main problems with that process, i.e., the delays at USCIS in processing the I-140 visa petition and the immigrant visa quota delays.  We note that the report references the fact that one of the Service Centers charged with adjudicating Schedule A casework is some 4 months behind what the Processing Report presently indicates.

The Ombudsman concludes the report with the following recommendations:

• That USCIS separate and prioritize Schedule A green card nurse applications so that they can be expedited upon immigrant visa availability.
• That USCIS centralize Schedule A nurse applications at one designated USCIS service center to facilitate more efficient and consistent processing of Schedule A applications.
• That USCIS regularly communicate with DOL and develop points of contact at DOL to discuss concerns and direct inquiries regarding the processing of nurse applications.

In conclusion, while the report makes recommendations to improve the processing of the I-140 Schedule A petitions at the USCIS, legislative action is still needed to increase the number of immigrant visas available each year for nurses. Indications so far from incoming President Obama and the incoming Congress are good that this issue will be dealt with early in 2009.  The Ombudsman’s Report and the reasonably good chances of increased immigrant visa quotas for nurses reinforce our opinion that hospitals, staffing agencies and other healthcare providers should be filing I-140 Schedule A visa petitions now to establish their position on the immigrant visa quota waiting list in order to be ahead of the competition when more immigrant visas become available and the processing procedures improve and become faster.      

Please feel free to contact us with any questions that you might have pertaining to this information.  As always, we are available to assist you with your immigration needs for all healthcare occupations.  This is our area of specialty.  Our highly trained staff stands ready to work with you on designing an immigration program that suits your specific needs and requirements for 2009.

For more information on the report:
Read the original congressional memo