Other Immigration-Related News

• On Friday, Nov. 2, Congress reportedly struck two noteworthy amendments from the Department of Labor/Health and Human Services appropriations bill. According to the American Immigration Lawyers Association website (www.aila.org), the Schumer-Hutchison amendment proposed increasing "the domestic supply of nurses and physical therapists by recapturing unused green cards from the years 1996 and 1997," and the Grassley-Sanders amendment proposed adding an additional fee to the H-1B visa program to "create a special education fund to promote studies in the fields of math, science and engineering." Where will these amendments show up next? Stay tuned. – Cheryl Smith

• The Bush administration is being called out for trampling the Constitution to expedite construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall, seen by many as an impotent security tactic, an immigration reform cop-out, and a threat to historically protected ecosystems. The Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife filed a complaint in U.S. District Court last week challenging Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's invocation of the 2005 Real ID act to waive 19 environmental, conservation, and cultural laws to restart work on a wall in Arizona's San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area. This comes after U.S. District Court Judge Ellen S. Huvelle issued on Oct. 10 a temporary restraining order stopping the border wall, saying the DHS and the Bureau of Land Management hadn't properly analyzed the impacts on wildlife and natural resources and that the agencies excluded the public from their decision-making process. – Daniel Mottola