Good news for the pro-migrant movement -- the Obama-Biden transition team has Tino Cuellar and T. Alexander Aleinikoff as part of the policy working groups, including Immigration. Their job would be to develop a priority of policy directives for the new Administration.

On Tina Cuellar (Source: The National Journal, March 2008)

He believes that comprehensive immigration reform must go beyond addressing border security and the status of the nation's 12 million illegal immigrants to confronting the current system's bureaucratic failings, providing job opportunities for American workers, promoting economic development in Latin America, and determining "how our immigration policy reflects our values and needs as Americans. "Having grown up near the Mexican border -- first in Brownsville, Texas, and later in California's Imperial Valley – the Mexican-American Cuellar opposes the controversial southern border fence, which Obama has voted to construct. Cuellar, who joined the Obama campaign in April 2007, brings expertise on the regulatory side of immigration and international security, as well as what he calls a "passion" for refugee policy.

T Alexander Aleinikoff in a paper (Source: The Salon, 2006):

"It is time to think seriously about a future when travel within North America is largely unrestricted. For some, such a plan appears unthinkable. Removing the border patrol from our southwest border, they will say, will flood the United States with unskilled workers, overburden the infrastructure of localities, and wreak havoc on our welfare system. But in years ahead what is now viewed as a threat will be viewed as a benefit: because the U.S. population is aging and the ratio of workers to retired persons is decreasing, new immigrant workers will likely be the key to the economic growth necessary to sustain social security systems and our standard of living."