Voltaire 2.jpgFrench philosopher and aphorist, François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire, wrote in Italian that “Il meglio è l’inimico del bene [the perfect is the enemy of the good].”

The wisdom of this saying, championed by pragmatists everywhere, comes to mind upon reading a May 30, 2013 Policy Memorandum (PM)

Man with files.jpgImmigration law and tax law, although at first glance strikingly different, share much in common.  Each rivals the other in complexity.  Each permeates every nook and cranny of human behavior — from commerce and criminality to love and divorce, from mental illness to extraordinary brilliance, from birth to death and everything in between. Though each

Thumbnail image for grand vin Lafite.jpgWhile most of the nation fixated this week on black and brown American heroes in Cleveland, the attention of immigration advocates diverged.  They vacillated between delight with the imploding anti-immigration conservative movement and nail-biting over votes on a flood of amendments to the massive, bipartisan Gang of Eight bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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The usual xenophobic suspects made the usual noises after the tragic events in Boston last week.  Perhaps the most premature outcry came from electrified-border-fence proponent, Rep. Steve King, Republican from Iowa, who a day after the marathon explosions linked a report (ultimately untrue) that a Saudi national had planted the bombs with King’s mission

Savings.jpgFrugality, something second nature to our colonial forebears, is a trait we Americans seem to have forgotten.  We are profligate in our material acquisitions and in their disposition. (Witness the growing mountains of toxic electronic waste that are almost as hard to be rid of as spent nuclear fuel.)   Saving for a rainy day

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The New I-9:

Why Now When We Need Immigration Amnesty for Employers?


By Nicole Kersey and Angelo A. Paparelli


Irony was plentiful last week in Washington and around the country. 

One particularly hawkish Republican, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (who never met a war-on-terror strategy he disliked), glommed onto Senator Rand Paul’s filibustery

lawyer with section of law.jpg“U.S. immigration law is like stratified rock, revealing layer on layer of Congressional accretions laid down over many years, with the superstructure upended in tectonic shifts triggered by the baffling and contradictory interpretations of multiple agencies and courts.” 

Nothing of substance has changed since I offered that post last August, save for a groundbreaking election that

Wild rabbit in the meadow.jpgWinston Churchill, whose mother was American (Jennie Jerome of Brooklyn), could just as well have been speaking about the components of comprehensive immigration reform.  Instead he was commenting on the Allies’ post-World War II plans for world governance when, in the summer of 1942 with the war yet unwon, he said:

I hope these speculative studies

Thumbnail image for soccer suit 3.jpg[Blogger’s note:  Today’s guest column is by my colleague at Seyfarth Shaw, John Quill. Three abiding passions animate John — love of family, sports (hockey in particular) and immigration law.  His passion for sports and frustration with U.S. immigration law’s employer-sanctions enforcement regime combine today to bring us this insightful and wistful post.] 

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I was escorted to the woodshed on January 15, a very public woodshed, and deservedly so.  Alejandro (Ali) Mayorkas, the Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), politely took me to task at a Public Engagement during the Q & A session when I raised two points. One involves the subject of a