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  • prioritydate
    01-10 11:23 AM
    Now the killing has gone mad. Apart from killing the innocent civilians, crazy war mongers started bombing schools and killing innocent school kids. Today two schools were bombed and more than 40 children have been massacred.

    Its sad to see school children being brutally killed by missles and tanks. I don't understand how people could blow up innocent kids, women and men under the name of self-defence?

    This world has gone crazy and there's no one questioning about this in-human atrocities committed against fellow human being.

    Lets us pray for those who are going thru this hardship, and for an immediate end to this war crime.

    How many more innocent civilians including children they are planning to kill?. All these so called peace loving nations blocking the UN from making a cease-fire resolution. Looks like so called freedom lovers want more innocent lives.

    When Mumbai was attacked by terrorists, whole world was united and supported the victim(India). Now the same world is against the victim and encouraging more killing by not stopping the attrocities.

    Why would Hamas hide in school if they love their people so much? No body plans to kill innocent civilians, except Muslim terrorists, as we saw that everywhere in this world. So, what is your solution? Ask Israel to stop invading and punish Hamas, while they are busy blasting rockets from schools? Would you be happy if some Jew kids get killed? I believe you would be more that happy and would lit fire crackers!





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  • unitednations
    03-24 07:28 PM
    UN,

    I don't think your view of Indian monopoly in IT is correct. It is a natural flow of human resources from countries which had plenty of it to USA which needed it.

    The reason for Indians/Chinese taking up majority of H1B visas is that there are lot of educated candidates to pick from highly populous countries like India and China.

    US never gave any preference to Indians or Chinese in H1B visas. The fact is India and China produced lot of graduates who were capable of doing IT work. If you look at it, IT job is not a hard thing to master for any Indian. So US had the necessity for skilled people, India and China had the supply of these people, naturally staffing companies came up to bank on this opportunity. It was a natural evolution, there is no bias towards Indians/Chinese. If you take any small country in the region, they didn't have enough qualified people so staffing companies didn't flourish in those countries.

    This is one of those things that people are going to agree to disagree.

    btw; my experience with the Chinese is that many of them came here initially on student visa and decided to stay. I don't know many that came directly here on h-1b. They haven't developed the network of staffing companies (main reason I believe is the english issue wheres people from India generally don't have this).





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  • EndlessWait
    07-14 09:24 PM
    for those who were eligible to file in EB2, its even more painful...

    There are just too many cases in the Eb3 pipeline, unless USCIS/govt. does something about it..





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  • gcgreen
    08-06 01:03 PM
    Excellent point.

    Here is the relevant portion from 8 C.P.R. � 204.5(k)(2). This is the reason, in my opinion, why any lawsuit against BS+5 has not much merit value.

    ...

    (2) Definitions. As used in this section:

    Advanced degree

    means any United States academic or professional degree or a foreign equivalent degree above that of baccalaureate. A United States baccalaureate degree or a foreign equivalent degree followed by at least five years of progressive experience in the specialty shall be considered the equivalent of a master's degree. If a doctoral degree is customarily required by the specialty, the alien must have a United States doctorate or a foreign equivalent degree.

    ======================================



    ____________________________
    US Permanent Resident since 2002



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  • minimalist
    08-05 03:37 PM
    I said most of the case. Not all. Ofcouse, most of the bodyshoppers does this abuse. Like labor subsitution, creating a duplicate job just to file EB2 etc.. I am not blaming good US employers and employees. There are tons on non-IT genuine EB2 cases are there..

    If Y2K issue was not there and there is no explosion of IT industry, you wouldn't have had this scenario where you find severe retrogression for India.
    If you are thinking in terms of meritocracy, I am sure most of the people who are so vehemently arguing are not the best and brightest from their batch on every level . People with better credentials may not be doing as well as you . So stop cribbing about how somebody else who you suppose is inferior to you is getting ahead.





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  • NKR
    04-15 08:34 PM
    Factors to consider when buying:
    1. Will you have to slog extra to make mortgage payments. If it means you are going to spend less time with your family, then is it really worth it.
    2. Will your spouse start working to help support mortgage payments. Does this imply kids go to daycare. Then probably your kid isnt geting the care a mom can only provide to her child.
    3. Will the stress level increase after buying the house (again worried for making payments, losing jobs). Is it worth it.
    4. Mostly all apartments have open areas where kids can play. They are much bigger then backyards in any house. Even in your backyard you will have to watch your kids when they are outdoors. Same here in the apartment outdooors.
    5. Chances are you will have more savings when you live in an apartment. You can do something really constructive like take you family for vacation, cruise.
    6. Does owning a home prevent you from visiting your home country, relatives etc as you are always tied up to making mortgage payments.

    For people who are really making lots of money & dont care much for it, above statments dont have much significance. Most of us are in the middle class range. So savings do matter to them.


    Let me declare the winners:
    1. Mariner & nojoke are logical & declared winners in this debate
    2. kaiserose & NKR have made some mistakes by buying a costly home & wouldn't admit.

    May God Bless you guys.

    probably you have change your handle from iwantmygreen to iamgreenwithenvy. dude, first of all who made you the judge, second of all how and why did you assume that I bought a costly home?. I went in for a townhome not far from where Mr Marinner lives, going by his posts I know he lives in or near atlanta. also, we are on single income and I can happily afford the mortgage for my small home and ofcourse my kid is happy.



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  • yrspassby
    08-07 04:46 PM
    An old man visits his doctor and after thorough examination the doctor tells him: "I have good news and bad news, what would you like to hear first?"

    Patient: "Well, give me the bad news first."

    Doctor: "You have cancer, I estimate that you have about two years left."

    Patient: "Oh no! That's awefull! In two years my life will be over! What kind of good news could you probably tell me, after this??"

    Doctor: "You also have Alzheimer's. In about three months you are going to forget everything I told you."





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  • anilsal
    11-12 11:59 PM
    Now i remember about my Indian friend who passed through the "H1B turned GC holder" route bad mouthing about US h1 policy ( that time there was an attempt to hike the quota by some 20000 and he was deeply upset by that ).

    It is not about your Indian friend alone. There are a large number of people who have got GC/Citizenship via some form of immigration (mostly family) and are bad mouthing H1B holders/quota etc. In addition, since some of them run businesses, guess which party they love. ;)



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  • Raju
    05-24 03:32 PM
    Raju, the unemployment is at 4.7%. That is good, but how about earning power and wage increases ? I hear all the time my friends report that they can no longer afford goods and services as they did five or four years ago. There are plenty of evidence that in many sectors wages have dropped or have stagnated. Is that indication of surplus pr shortage of workers ?

    Regarding his idea of sending 15 millions of illegals out, that is not absurd. He never told he wanted to do it overnight. A gradual, slow deportation program yes, it would be probably the best way to handle this.

    I am sorry if I look negative to you guys, but my goal is to be sincere and honest about facts here.

    I think that wages have gone up drastically during the dotcom bubble and you should expect them to flatten for a few years. Also, the economy is coming out from a bust and that accounts to a little stagnation. It is simple man, the world also has to catch up. If you get the same job done for much less in coutries like China, India, Russia and romania, why do you think the wages will go up, unless there is a new technology, that absolutely needs cutting edge skills. This is the way it has been in ht past, this is the way it is in present and will be this way in future. The services and goods you are talking about will become more expensive if you want to send the undocumented workers out. And the wages may not go up that much because companies can get stuff done in other parts of the world. A reporter should talk about two sides of the issue and I have never seen Lou do that. I do not have the time/interest to find the transcripts but he had been offensive about H1s and I heard him say that H1's do not pay taxes, which is a blunder.





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  • Macaca
    02-29 09:03 PM
    Oracle Unit Lobbied on Patents, Visas (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022803503.html) Associated Press, Feb 28

    WASHINGTON -- A unit of business software maker Oracle Corp. paid VAR II LLC $140,000 in 2007 to lobby the federal government .

    The firm lobbied Congress on a patent reform bill and immigration reform legislation related to visas for high-tech workers, according to the form posted online Feb. 13 by the Senate's public records office. Oracle USA Inc. paid the firm $140,000 in the second half of 2007 to lobby on those issues after hiring VAR II earlier last year.

    The House last year approved a patent-reform bill intended to reduce litigation, improve patent quality and establish a post-approval evaluation process. Technology and financial services firms support the legislation, but pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies said it would weaken patent protection by reducing infringement penalties. The Senate is considering similar legislation.

    Oracle is based in Redwood City, Calif.

    Lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches, under a federal law enacted in 1995.



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  • SunnySurya
    08-05 02:21 PM
    Almost all the porting cases I know falls in that category. Only those people who has resources and means to do this will be able to do it. And guess who are those people...

    I understand that case you described in your example. This may be case of "misuse". But does it happen in most of the cases where PD porting is requested?

    Also, misuse happens in other areas. For example, how many GC Future jobs are jobs in real sense. One thing leads to another. It can open can of worms.





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  • aadimanav
    07-13 11:45 PM
    Actually Version 2 is the latest draft:
    http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/showthread.php?p=262392#post262392

    Excellent letter. - I support even I am EB2.

    One should not point other category and ask for the right.



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  • DallasBlue
    07-08 12:00 AM
    I guess a good CPA can be lot of help as well. if your husband doesnt have paystubbs and w2 company/CPA's can actually go back and correct them for mistakes/miscalculations.





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  • soni7007
    08-06 04:01 PM
    Yes, i agree that it is unpredictable and no one can guarantee as to which one will move faster.
    But, it can go either way, may be 2002 EB3 goes current before 2005 Eb2 or vice-versa. Atleast they will have an equal chance and position. However, in the other case, when u allow porting, then A (EB3, PD 2002) will be strictly ahead of B (EB2, PD 2005)


    According to you A acquires skills over a period of time and so does a person who went for higher education and is EB2. You also say that if there was no porting, A has a PD of 2002 (in EB3) and B has a PD of 2005 (in EB2), then they are almost in the same position.

    At this point both of us agree that A and B are equal, right?

    If they both are EQUAL, then can you guarantee that both PDs will move at the same rate?. If A�s PD becomes unavailable and B�s become current. B will get GC faster than A even though both were equal (from your logic). Is this fair, then?



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  • bfadlia
    01-07 11:26 AM
    I participated in the "mumbai attacked" thread, but always tried not to give any analysis of the history because I sure don't have the background not belonging to the region..
    yet I'm reading the darnest things here from people who apparently read 2 lines from wikipedia, copy and paste here then start talking like they know everything about the arab-israeli conflict and think they can analyze it..

    The phrase foxnews and similar media have everyone parroting here is "Israel is surrounded by hostile arab countries that waged wars against it several times. Israel is always in self defense" Let's see..

    1948: Israeli Irgun and Shtern gangs, the prototype of the israeli army were going village to village massacring palestinians to drive them out of their villages to annex them to newly created israel which they did.. arab nations who were mostly still under colonial influence sent their police-like forces to try to protect the palestinians, but of course they were no match for the mostly european WWII-veterans Israeli forces

    1956: In a dispute between Egypt, Britain and France over the control of Suez canal that in no way involves Israel, Israel attacked Egypt and took control of Sinai peninsula until Soviets and US urged it to leave.

    1967: Without a single bullet shot at Israel, it attacked Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Gaza and the west bank, occupying Egypt's Sinai, Syria's Golan heights, and annexing gaza, East Jerusalem and the west bank.

    1973: Only time Arabs started the offensive, Egypt and Syria attacked to get back their occupied lands. Egypt managed to get part of Sinai, and got the rest through peace treaty. Syria failed and the golan is still occupied till this day.

    1982: Israel invading Lebanon and occupying southern Lebanon till 2000.. Reason was meddling in a conflict between Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Lebanese factions in which none of these parties attacked Israel.

    60 years have passed with the civilized world issuing UN resolutions for israel to end its occupation and to let the millions of displaced Palestinians return to their homes inside israel and Israel rejecting them. Then we have the courage to blame the Palestinians for not taking it easy, accepting the miserable conditions israel imposed on them and firing their 7000 fire crackers that killed 4 people.. the ungrateful bastards!!





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  • OLDMONK
    07-08 09:06 PM
    I read these desperate cases where a whole lot of IV'ers try to help with their best understanding of Immigration Law. Including veterans like UN and others who have been through hoops, successes and failures in assesing a particular case.

    My personal understanding is that NO 2 two cases are identical for USCIS and there is a term "Officer Discretion" which comes into play a lot. This Discretion is more positive to the applicant when a case is prepared prefessionaly and a little negative when done without care.

    Also even though the individual affected tries to provide the information to get the best solution does not mean he/she has provided 100% information based on facts of the case. There could be something missed out easily just because that does not ring the bell for the person submitting the information or simply because the information is too private and not appropriate on a public forum.

    My point is these forums are not meant for a realistic solution to a complicated issue like the one on this thread. Please get a good attorney and that does not only mean Murthy or Khanna. There are tons of attorneys available both good and competent and affordable and who may have a solution which appeals USCIS officer.

    Best of Luck.



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  • bfadlia
    01-10 04:16 AM
    And your source is RASHID KHALIDI!

    I rest my case. Anyone knowing anything about Middle East conflict knows how biased and pro-Palestinian this guy is.

    Partition of Palestine was done as per United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181

    Stop smoking pot!

    i'm amazed u know khalidi (yes pro-palestinian, all US media is pro-Israel and no one finds anything wrong in that), and on the other hand think that resolution 181 had anything to do with egypt or jordan, the resolution partitioned palestine into a jewish state on 56% of the land and an arab state on 43% of the land and about 1% international area.. that is at a time where the palestinian population was 1,223,000 and the jewish population 417,000

    Territory Arab and other population % Arab and other Jewish population % Jewish Total population
    Arab State 725,000 99% 10,000 1% 735,000
    Jewish State 407,000 45% 498,000 55% 905,000
    International 105,000 51% 100,000 49% 205,000
    Total 1,237,000 67% 608,000 33% 1,845,000
    Data from the Report of UNSCOP — 1947

    In case you don't know israel took much more in 1948 than what this unjust resolution specified, then it took control of 100% in 1967 and never ceased to build settlements everywhere since then, the most generous israeli peace offer since oslo was is to establish the palestinian state on 13% of the land

    i am tempted to respond to your "pot smoking" comment, but i have enough self respect not to go there





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  • manub
    07-07 09:55 PM
    Hi,
    Thank you for all your support.They asked for my husband`s paystubs ,all employment history all W2`s when he filed for AOS as primary.Later we withdrew his petition and only kept petition filed through me as the primary.That officer is extremely detailed oriented ,he/she asked and questioned every minute detail pertaining to our case.
    New update on EAD is that local offices are no longer authorized to issue interim EAD`S.We went to local office in greer, south carolina(we live in charlotte,nc) and the answer we got was that they can only email uscis why there is a delay.and if we wanted to find an answer we should come back in 2 weeks and that they won`t disclose any thing by phone because of privacy act.





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  • rsdang
    08-22 11:59 AM
    new lecturer (also a Bihari professor) was unable to control the class. The guys were just talking without giving any attention to him. So he wanted to send a guy who was creating most of the problem out. But he doesn't know how to put it in English. He went near the guy. Shouted, "follow me" .The guy followed him till he went out of the class. Now the lecturer turned back and again shouted, "Don't follow me" and went inside the class..........





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    Sir had once gone to a film with his wife. By chance, he happened to see one of our boys at the theatre, though the boy did not see them. So the next day at school... (To that boy) - " Yesterday I saw you WITH MY WIFE at the Cinema Theatre"





    rheoretro
    11-12 02:28 PM
    rheoretro Surely there is a distinction between illegal immigrants and Latinos (though I am not sure how thick is the line) but I did say that we cannot have even a whiff of support for illegal immigration be it from any country, including India.

    It is unfortunate that the legal reform package cannot be passed without the CIR and one of the reasons behind that is the tendency of pro-immigration groups to paint both forms of immigration with the same brush.

    A few days ago, I received an email from SAALT (South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow), urging me to lend support to stop passing the anti-immigration bill. Their logic was that there are millions of illegal Indian immigrants as well so we should support them. When I countered them saying that essentially you are asking us to support something based on whether they are "our crooks or not" and not on the basis of whether it is right or wrong, their reply essentially was that we know this better than you so just listen to our argument and support us.

    Bottom line? Illegal immigration in any form is not acceptable.

    English_August: Actually, it is a very thick line between legal and illegal immigration, as far as Latinos are concerned. There has been strong Latino/Hispanic immigration (legal) into the US for several decades now, if not a whole century, which is also possible. There are third and fourth generation people in the US of Latino/Hispanic ancestry. It's just that there was a serious influx of illegal immigrants in the US over the last ten to fifteen years, and the media makes it seem as if they are all illegal. That is not true.

    I agree - illegal immigration in any and every form is unacceptable. I am familiar with SAALT, including their executive director, Deepa Iyer. While I admire the community outreach work that they do, I too differ with them over a blanket amnesty. BTW, it was Deepa who corrected my false impression recently. The numbers for illegal immigrants from India are astoundingly high - the estimate is between 300,000 and 400,000. That number compares with the number of people in the legal immigrant EB pipeline from India, probably.

    At the end of the day, it, sadly, does come down to numbers. Even in 1986, in Reagan's time when the Simpson-Mazzoli bill was passed, amnesty of some form was given to people who had either entered the country illegally or had over-stayed their visas. This time the number of illegal immigrants is much higher, and Congress can't ignore this problem anymore. At least the American people seem to have clearly told Congress to put aside petty partisan squabbling, and get the people's work done on Capitol Hill.

    I am simply amazed by this dismal statistic - IV claims that there are about half a million people stuck in immigration backlogs/retrogression. Then why does IV have a membership that merely represents barely 1% of this pool? 6500 members isn't enough. Capitol Hill treats you differently if you say that you have 20,000 or 30,000 members...you get more attention.





    Macaca
    08-01 08:24 PM
    House Votes 411-8 to Pass Ethics Overhaul (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/31/AR2007073100200.html) Far-Reaching Measure Faces Senate Hurdles By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer, August 1, 2007

    The House gave final and overwhelming approval yesterday to a landmark bill that would tighten ethics and lobbying rules for Congress, forcing lawmakers to more fully detail how their campaigns are funded and how they direct government spending.

    The new lobbying bill would, for the first time, require lawmakers to disclose small campaign contributions that are "bundled" into large packages by lobbyists. It would require lobbyists to detail their own campaign contributions, as well as payments to presidential libraries, inaugural committees and charities controlled by lawmakers. The proposal would also put new disclosure requirements on special spending measures for pet projects, known as "earmarks."

    "What we did today was momentous," declared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "It's historic."

    The bill is the most far-reaching attempt at ethics reform since Watergate, although it is not as aggressive as some legislators wanted in restricting the use of earmarks and in requiring the disclosure of donation bundling. The legislation, which had been stalled until negotiators worked out a deal in recent days to get it passed before the August recess, is a priority for Democrats, who won control of Congress in part because they had decried what they called "a culture of corruption" under Republicans.

    Although it passed the House 411 to 8, the bill could face hurdles in the Senate, which is under a new ethics cloud after the FBI raid Monday on Sen. Ted Stevens's house. Last night, a group of Republican senators prevented Democrats from bringing up the bill, forcing the scheduling of a vote tomorrow to break the filibuster. Still, senators from both parties predicted easy passage by week's end.

    Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) all but dared Republicans to try to block the proposal when it comes to a vote as early as tomorrow. "With that resounding vote in the House, 411-8, I think people ought to be concerned about voting against it," he said yesterday.

    But in a closed-door lunch with fellow Republican senators yesterday, Stevens (R-Alaska) himself threatened to block the measure, objecting that the legislation's new restrictions on lawmakers' use of corporate jets would unfairly penalize members of Congress who live in distant states, such as himself.

    The legislation would end secret "holds" in the Senate, which allow a single senator to block action without disclosing that he or she has done so. Members of Congress would no longer be allowed to attend lavish parties thrown in their honor at political conventions. Gifts, meals and travel funded by lobbyists would be banned, and travel on corporate jets would be restricted. Lobbyists would have to disclose their activities more often and on the Internet. And lawmakers convicted of bribery, perjury and other crimes would be denied their congressional pensions.

    "These are big-time fundamental reforms," said Fred Wertheimer, president of the open-government group Democracy 21.

    Rep. Michael N. Castle (R-Del.), who failed to get ethics legislation enacted last year, noted that the final bill's disclosure rules are considerably less tough on the "bundling" of small campaign contributions into large donations by lobbyists. The original ethics bill would have required the disclosure of bundled contributions over $5,000 every three months. Under the final bill, lawmakers would have to report every six months any bundled contributions from lobbyists totaling more than $15,000. In one year, a single lobbyist could funnel nearly $30,000 to a candidate or campaign committee without any of those actions having to be disclosed.

    House negotiators also refused to lengthen the current one-year "cooling-off" period, during which former House members are prohibited from becoming lobbyists.

    Some conservatives latched on to the weakening of earmark disclosure rules that had passed the Senate in January. An explicit prohibition on trading earmarks for votes was dropped by House and Senate Democratic negotiators. A prohibition on any earmark that would financially benefit lawmakers, their immediate families, their staff or their staff's immediate families was altered to say that the ban would apply to any earmark that advances a lawmaker's "pecuniary interest." Critics say that would mean the benefit would have to be direct for the measure to be prohibited, and that the ban would not apply to a project that would benefit a larger community, including the lawmaker.

    House members are covered by earmark rules, passed earlier this year, that are tougher than the legislation, which would apply only to senators.

    "Earmarks have been the currency of corruption and, unfortunately, this lobbying reform bill does not adequately address that problem," declared Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a longtime critic of earmarks.

    Reform groups and Democrats accused opponents of using the earmark issue as a pretext to block the other rule changes. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who has blocked the legislation in the past, confirmed that he remains uncomfortable with the broader bill's mandates on lobbying disclosures and gift bans.

    "You could've done nothing, or some staff member could have made an innocent mistake, and now you're defending yourself in a court of law," he said. "It's nuts."

    Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), another critic, had single-handedly blocked the calling of a formal House-Senate conference to negotiate the final deal, forcing Democrats to hammer out the compromise on their own. The House passed it under fast-track procedures that prohibit amendments but require a two-thirds majority for approval -- a threshold that was easily met.

    Now, Reid must get the bill through the Senate without any amendment, using a parliamentary tactic that has been roundly criticized by Republicans in the past as strong-arming. But in this case, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has given his tacit assent, laying the blame squarely on his own conservative hard-liners.

    "In a sense, we made it difficult on ourselves," McConnell said.

    It may be even more difficult for Republicans to block the measure while their senior senator, Stevens, is under a cloud of suspicion. FBI agents raided the powerful lawmaker's house Monday, looking for evidence in a long-running investigation of an Alaska energy firm, Veco, and its alleged efforts to bribe Alaska lawmakers.

    And yesterday, the House ethics committee indicated that it may consider an inquiry into whether Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.) violated rules by calling a federal prosecutor about a pending investigation. The committee's staff interviewed the prosecutor, former U.S. attorney David C. Iglesias, yesterday.

    At least eight lawmakers -- six Republicans and two Democrats -- are under federal investigation. Earlier this year, the homes and business interests of Reps. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) and John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) were searched, and Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) was indicted on corruption charges.



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