People have been quick to jump on Dennis Kucinich's for his vote against the SCHIP bill. According to the many critics who are slamming him for it, he is "grandstanding" by not supporting "progressive" reform and thus undermining the health of millions of children. That is, they say, Kucinich chose himself over the children.

Ironically, though, it's suffering children that made Kucinich vote against the bill. It doesn't cover children of legal immigrants:

New York Times ran a story on how Legal Immigrants Rally at Capitol to Protest Backlog The immigrants, including doctors, medical technicians and computer engineers from India and China, came from as far as California and Washington State to call on Congress to provide more permanent visas for highly educated immigrants and more resources for the overburdened immigration system.

A similar group of Immigrants, many of them professionals await their spouses who are waiting outside the US due to backlogs in the processing of F2A family immigration visas. UniteFamilies.org website says "These are mostly young families — a husband or wife, separated from their spouse and young child.  They are waiting for their I-130 petitions (petition for relative) to be approved.  The current waiting time is 5 years."

This issue seems to have been sidelined in the immigration debate. Wonder why spouses of law-abiding permanent residents are destined to wait outside the borders for over 5 years!