Headlines @ U.Va.

Plan to fix immigration system may break it, law professor says
The U.S. immigration bureaucracy is already swamped with a growing backlog of 6.2 million applications. President Bush’s plan to ease restrictions on foreign workers is “ill-considered,” wrote law professor David A. Martin, former general counsel to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Offering temporary legal status to 8 million undocumented migrants working in the United States will only add to the backlog, he said, and allowing foreign workers to take jobs Americans won’t take will only encourage employers to pay wages Americans won’t accept. Another provision requiring foreign workers to leave if they lose their jobs will give employers “enormous power to silence any complaints about working conditions,” he added, noting that enforcement staffing has not grown for years. In all, “It’s hard to imagine a less promising way to fix a system the president calls broken than by flooding it with these new demands,” he wrote.
— Washington Post, Jan. 11

Skip the moon and shoot for Mars
The idea of human exploration of Mars, as President Bush recently proposed, is “unbelievably exciting,” said former NASA astronaut Kathryn Thornton, now assistant dean for graduate programs at U.Va.’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. She is wary, though, of Bush’s plan to use the moon as a base for Mars exploration. “I would like to see us go directly to Mars. I’m afraid that if we go to the moon, we’ll get stuck on the moon. And we’ll continue to support that infrastructure and it will delay a trip to somewhere we haven’t been for another two, three or four generations.”
— Richmond Times-Dispatch, Jan. 15

Can I get a nurse? Increasingly, answer may be ‘No’
Forecasters predict that by 2020, Virginia will have less than two-thirds the number of nurses it needs, U.Va. Nursing School dean Jeanette Lancaster wrote in a recent commentary. Yet some qualified applicants are being turned away at the state nursing schools due to a shortage of faculty and a lack of space. Nursing programs need more money, she argued, including lifting tuition caps, creating incentive funds to encourage future nurses, and boosting state funds earmarked for enrollment expansion.
— Roanoke Times, Jan. 18

Bond concerned that King’s legacy is becoming lost
History professor Julian Bond is encouraged that, after 18 years, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is being celebrated nationwide as a day of reflection, education and community service. Still, he is concerned that memories of King’s life and activism beyond the “I Have a Dream” sound bite are fading fast. “It’s as if he gave a speech on Aug. 28 and died on Aug. 29,” said Bond, once a King confidant. “It’s a shame — we only celebrate half the man.” But half a celebration is better than just another commercialized day off, he allowed. “I just don’t want to see newspaper ads saying, ‘White Sale on Martin Luther King’s Holiday,’” he quipped.
— Washington Post, Jan. 19

Sabato revels in political season
The onset of the caucus and primary season brings out the best in oft-quoted politics professor Larry Sabato. Two samples of his wit and wisdom from recent weeks:

• On the value of Virginia Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine’s endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman: “Endorsements don’t matter. They’re worth the vote of the endorser, plus about half the time, the vote of the endorser’s spouse.”
— Associated Press, Jan. 20

• On the president’s re-election staff in the wake of John Kerry’s upset of Howard Dean in the Iowa Democratic caucuses: “They were ready for Dean and looking forward to a 49-state landslide. Well, guess what: They’re going to have a much tougher opponent. But it’s good they’re finding that out in January.”
— New York Post, Jan. 21