Readers have already posted in the comments, but it's worth bumping up to its own post. Harry Reid is going to try to get a vote as early as next week to include the DREAM Act on a Department of Defense appropriations bill. The measure could fail because Republicans who are potential supporters but afraid to take a pro-immigration position could argue that including the measure in the Defense bill is the wrong way to proceed. We shall see...

A little out of the box thinking. There are some useful ideas here even if there are many practical questions on how the plan would work. For one, is a highest bidder system necessarily the best indicator of which employers are most deserving of securing visas. Should a school system desperate for math teachers lose out on securing a visa just because it has a much more limited budget than a major corporation? I'd suggest perhaps looking at a program like this running as a separate track in the immigration system rather than necessarily replacing what we have. Of course, we can also focus on fixing problems with the existing system as well.