Thread: FAIR: LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

Recent Press Releases


Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Rejects Bid by Illegal Aliens to Overturn Arizona's Proposition 200





August 15, 2005
In this update:

Attend Town Hall Meetings this Month and Ask your Elected Officials to Commit to Immigration Enforcement
Fight the Growing Problem of Banks Issuing Mortgages to Illegal Aliens
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Rejects Bid by Illegal Aliens to Overturn Arizona's Proposition 200
H-1B Visa Cap Reached in Record Time
Myrick Plans Bill to Combat Drunk Driving Illegal Aliens
Illegal Aliens Reportedly Voted in Utah
Attend Town Hall Meetings this Month and Ask your Elected Officials to Commit to Immigration Enforcement

Congress is on Summer District Work Period all this month, making August a great time to get a public commitment from your legislators to get serious about immigration enforcement!

Call your House and Senate members' district offices to request a list of upcoming town hall meetings and other speaking engagements that are open to the public. Attend these meetings with your likeminded friends, family members, and neighbors and ask your elected officials to explain what they are doing and plan to do about the immigration crisis. (See sample questions below) Don't know your legislators' district office phone numbers? Click here to find out.

Sample questions:


What steps are you taking to fortify the enforcement of immigration laws?
Do you support allowing or giving illegal aliens legal status for any purpose including participation as guest workers?
What are you doing to prevent localities from adopting sanctuary policies that bar state and local police from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement authorities?
What are you doing to encourage state and local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration enforcement authorities?
What are you doing to stop the growing practice of banks providing home mortgages to illegal aliens who are deportable at virtually any time? (take action, see story below)
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Fight the Growing Problem of Banks Issuing Mortgages to Illegal Aliens

Your help is needed to convince members of the House Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking Committee to bring an end to the growing problem of banks issuing mortgages to illegal aliens.

Competition for new customers is driving banks to offer illegal aliens home loans and they are getting help from government agencies such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which is encouraging states across the country to make mortgages available to underserved populations, regardless of immigration status.

Banks are accepting Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) in lieu of Social Security numbers and proof of payment of utilities to qualify illegal aliens for mortgages. The problem is already large and growing larger in states across the nation.

Please follow the committee links above to find out if your House or Senate members sit on these key committees. If so, please call their district office and leave a message asking them to put a stop to this by passing or amending legislation barring banks from issuing mortgages without proof of legal presence in the U.S. (Don't know your legislators' district office phone numbers? Click here to find out.) Be sure to ask questions about this if attending a town hall meeting as mentioned above.

Use the following talking points to support your request for action.


No illegal alien is a good mortgage candidate because they can be deported at any time.
Providing a mortgage to an illegal alien is a violation of the federal law against harboring illegal aliens.
If the federal government ever gets serious about enforcing laws against employing illegal aliens the loss of income of these illegal aliens with mortgages will bring about significant numbers of foreclosures.
As the numbers of high risk illegal aliens with mortgages continues to rise, the danger of another 1980s-style Savings and Loan crisis requiring a taxpayer bailout increases.
For more background information, read this article.

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Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Rejects Bid by Illegal Aliens to Overturn Arizona's Proposition 200

In a major victory for the voters of Arizona and the integrity of the referendum process, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by illegal aliens in Arizona challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 200. The San Francisco-based court ruled last week that the plaintiffs lacked the "legal standing" necessary to challenge the initiative approved by Arizona voters in November 2004.

Proposition 200 requires the state to verify the immigration status of people applying for benefits and services they are prohibited from receiving under federal law. In addition, the initiative requires all people registering to vote prove that they are U.S. citizens, and present identification when casting their votes. Read more.

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H-1B Visa Cap Reached in Record Time

Even though high-tech companies in the United States have laid off workers in record numbers, the industry hasn't lost its appetite for less expense foreign workers.

Last Friday, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that the 65,000 H-1B ceiling has been reached for 2006 and petitions received after Aug. 10 will not be processed. This is the earliest the government has reached the cap for H-1B visas, which are supposedly reserved for foreigners in specialty occupations, such as engineering, computer science and medicine.

Even more alarming is the fact that the actual number of temporary workers admitted under the program will be far in excess of the 65,000 "ceiling" because foreign workers hired by universities, research centers, and governments will be exempt, as will an additional 20,000 foreign graduates of U.S. universities with advanced degrees. On top of that, all current H-1B visa holders petitioning to remain in the country are not counted towards the annual cap.

While high-tech employers claim that they need the H-1B visa program because there are not enough Americans with the necessary skills to fill the jobs available, both the General Accounting Office and the U.S. Department of Labor have rejected the industry's claims of a worker shortage.

The reality is many employers exploit the H-1B program to hire foreign workers at cheaper salaries than they would pay domestic workers. This abuse is so overt that it is not uncommon for American workers to train their foreign replacements before being let go.

Those seeking to profit from unlimited cheap foreign labor are using the fact that the cap was met so quickly as ammunition in their fight for a new massive guestworker program.

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Myrick Plans Bill to Combat Drunk Driving Illegal Aliens

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) plans to introduce "The Scott Gardener Act" when Congress returns in September, legislation aimed at ensuring better coordination between law enforcement agencies in determining immigration status. Gardener was the Mount Holly man killed last month in Brunswick County when his car was hit by a truck driven by a drunk illegal Mexican immigrant. The deadly incident was Ramiro Gallegos fifth impaired driving charge in five years, and with each arrest he was eligible for deportation. Despite the fact that he was entered into computers as an illegal alien in 2000, immigration officials received no request for information about him from local law enforcement. Read more.

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Illegal Aliens Reportedly Voted in Utah

Recent reports confirm FAIR's long-held suspicion that illegal aliens are registering to vote when obtaining driver's licenses in states with lax laws and are in fact voting.

The issue of voter fraud by illegal aliens was raised in Utah during discussion of legislation on driver's licenses for illegal aliens. It was found that more than 58,000 illegal aliens had Utah driver's licenses, nearly 400 of them used their licenses to register to vote, and at least 14 actually voted in an election. Read more.

In light of this evidence, all states that have issued driver's licenses to illegal aliens should have their voter rolls combed, and illegal aliens found to have voted should be prosecuted.

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