Immigration Reform Scams

/ The Old Crank

I’m not surprised that this is happening, and I wonder if confusion among some immigrants has been compounded by the landmark gay rights rulings that occurred around the same time the comprehensive immigration reform bill passed in the Senate. The press covered the Senate passage as a victory (which it was), but for those who do not follow the inner workings of the legislative process closely—and/or who are unfamiliar with our legislative process in general—it may have appeared that something with the country’s immigration laws and procedures had suddenly changed, when in fact we are just one step along in what may be a long (and possibly futile) process to make those changes.

Unlike legislation, which not only has to pass both the Senate and the House, and then be signed by the president, (and even then, may have implementation dates far off in the future, like most of the provisions in the Affordable Care Act), SCOTUS rulings can have an immediate impact on policy, as it did with the gay rights cases, and I can understand why it might have appeared that something similar was happening with immigration policy, based on the understandable excitement over the passage of the Senate bill.

See: Avoid immigration reform scams – New York adult literacy | Examiner.com.

Kickstarter and the NEA Are Completely Different Things

/ The Old Crank

This is a pretty good column, but it’s shame that it takes five paragraphs to make the  important point that Kickstarter and the NEA are fundamentally different kinds of entities, so to compare how much they respectively “raise” doesn’t make a lot of sense. The NEA is not concerned with raising money from individual donors at all.

The reason this matters is because people unfamiliar with Kickstarter and/or how government arts funding works might read Issacson’s comment and assume, considering the source, (this was at an “ideas festival” after all), that this is a case where a smart young entrepreneur is beating the government at it’s own game. But as Boyle explains (without actually calling out Issacson for making a not-very-well-thought-out comparison), that’s not actually what’s going on here.

Pennsylvania Constitutional Amendment Would Let Elected Officials Determine Nonprofit Status

/ The Old Crank

I understand where this is coming from, but I’m not sure I would trust a legislature to fairly determine which organizations deserve a tax exemption more than the courts.

If such an amendment were to ever pass, I imagine lobbyists who represent nonprofits in the state capitol would see a nice little uptick in their business.