Daily features: July 16, 2007

• Daily video

Legal immigrant rally in San Jose, CA on green card processing backlog.

Read our earlier post on this: Daily features: July 11, 2007

• Monday blog round-up

• Jean Pfaelzer, of a George Mason University blog, takes a look at "What's scary about the anti-immigration debate".
• Would you pass the citizenship test?
• Cyberhillbilly's blog posted a video of Geraldo Rivera and Bill O'Reilly discussing immigration last night.
  

• Cartoon of the day

By Eric Allie of PoliticalCartoons.com, July 13, 2007.

Daily features: July 12, 2007

• Daily video

Tomás Contreras, a legal immigrant and entrepreneur, talks about his three-month stay in an immigrant detention center. He was detained on his way back from visiting family in Mexico. This video is part of Voces de la Frontera's reality tour.

• Thursday blog round-up

• 'Gandhian' visa flower protest by Indian immigrants gets noticed, and the SAJA blog compiles news links.
• The StructuralPatterns blog wonders why and how Rudy Giuliani can 'collapse' immigration and terrorism together.
• The GreenFertility blog ridicules Pat Buchanan for stating that immigrants bring disease into the country; followed by a news article that states that the unhealthy are very unlikely to immigrate at all.
  

• Cartoon of the day

By Daryl Cagle at MSNBC.com. Published July 11, 2007.

Friday blog round-up

• The BillT blog links to an article about Microsoft opening a research center in Vancouver to get around strict immigration rules in the United States.
• The National Center for Policy Analysis says that due to the declining fertility rate in Mexico, the influx of illegal immigrants to the U.S. will likely fix itself in time.

H-1B visas for highly-skilled 'dealt death blow'

The newly-blocked S.1639 immigration reform bill is talked about a lot in reference to inflow from Central and South America, and mostly in terms of "low-skilled" immigrants. However, as we've posted before, the "high-skilled" and their employers also had a stake in the bill.

CIO Insight reports:

High-tech companies such as Microsoft argue that a decline in the number of United States-born computer science graduates over the last seven years has forced them to rely on the H-1B visa and employment-based green card programs to deliver adequate supplies of qualified IT and engineer professionals.

"That can only be achieved through immediate reform of these programs to ensure they are meeting the needs of our economy ... It is our hope that the Congress will prioritize finding a solution to these urgent issues before the end of the year," said Microsoft officials.

Earlier: High-tech execs demand foreign workers

High-tech execs demand foreign workers

The New York Times reports that Bill Gates and his peers have been urging legislators to provide a greater number of visas for temporary foreigners and permanent immigrants. Google spokespeople told the NYT that this will be necessary to remain competitive in an increasingly competitive "knowledge-based economy".

This, of course, would only affect the smaller percentage of highly-skilled workers relative to the larger number of unskilled laborers who want to immigrate to the United States.