More About Immigration

Read "Top Talent Could Lose Fast Track to U.S.: Under Bill, Foreign Luminaries Would No Longer Skip Immigration Line" by Anthony Faiola and Robin Shulman, The Washington Post, May 26, 2007.

In the name of attracting the world's greatest and brightest, authorities have granted these luminaries priority access to green cards under a little-known provision offered to "aliens of extraordinary abilities."

It has provided a way for a host of notable foreigners -- among them John Lennon and Yoko Ono and Venezuelan-born New York Yankee Bobby Abreu -- to make America their home.

But the bill now being debated in Congress would do away with the special "EB-1" preferred-status category, effectively forcing foreign VIPs to take a number and get in line with everyone else. They would be subject to a complex point system to determine their eligibility -- assessing education levels, English abilities, experience in the United States and other factors -- just as any engineer from India or farmworker from Mexico.

Comment: Bad idea legislators. Let in the people who will create most wealth for the rest of us. That probably would not include rock groupies nor stars of sports only played in the United States, but it would include managers who could better run our companies and innovators who could develop new processes and products. JAD