U.S. immigration policy upside-down and here's why

I like facts.  They are so much better than demagoguery, ranting and raving you hear about U.S. immigration policy (or lack thereof).

So it may come as a surprise to you to hear from me that U.S. immigration policy is upside-down.  Here's the best example.  During the first full year after the 2001 Canadian Citizenship & Immigration Act went into effect (2002), here are how many immigrant visas Canada issued in the family and employment (Canada calls this cateory "economic") categories:

Family 46,319 (38.2%)
Economic 58,221 (48%)

By 2011, here were the numbers:

Family 45,449 (34.5%)
Economic 64,356 (49%)

Do you see the direction Canada is going in with its immigration policy?  It is trying to keep highly skilled workers and their foreign-born college and university graduates to build and improve its economy while maintaining a humanitarian level of family immigrant visa issuance.  It is trying to keep the brains and highly educated young people in Canada.  Smart.

In contrast, the United States issues 226,000 family immigrant visas and only 140,000 employment-based immigrant visas each fiscal year.  The State Department has backlogs for employment-based immigrant visas that force natives of some countries to wait more than six years for an immigrant visa in the highly skilled worker categories -- young people our colleges and universities educated!  Dumb immigration policy.

This is upside down, folks.  Write and call your federal representatives and tell them to fix this problem now.

Romney surrogate calls U.S. response in Libya 'limp-wristed'

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and surrogate for presidential hopeful former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) John Bolton harshly criticized the Obama administration’s response to the violence in Benghazi, Libya earlier this month, calling the U.S. response “limp-wristed."

The Bush appointee was speaking to Fox News on Friday when he used the homophobic insult, which, as Think Progress noted, is “usually used as a slur against or allusion to gay men” and to connote weakness.

“The US is viewed under Obama as weak, as Sen. McCain said, as declining in influence dramatically in the Middle East, pulling out of Iraq, intending to pull out of Afghanistan,” Bolton alleged, “having a limp wristed reaction to the assassination of four American diplomats.” - From RawStory, rawstory.com

John Bolton is disgusting.  He never saw combat in Vietnam -- although he supported the war -- because he joined the Maryland Army National Guard.  His former boss, George W. Bush, did the same thing by joining the Texas Air National Guard.

In fact, the Navy deployed ships off the Libyan coast on Sept. 12, the day after the attack, and deployed a group of Marines called a Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team to Libya to secure U.S. facilities.  This team is specially trained to guard, defend, or retake diplomatic installations.

John Bolton is a bellicose loud-mouth neocon bomb-thrower who has always been part of the problem, not part of the solution.