From: Roy Beck <ImmigrationInfo@numbersusa.com> Add to Address Book
Date: 2006/03/03 Fri AM 02:55:48 EST
Subject: Day 5----What happened to amnesty in Senate committee today


From: Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA
Date: Friday 3MAR06 2:30 a.m. EST


DAY 5 --- Phone Senators on what they said Thursday on amnesty bill in opening committee

HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED WHEN SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE STARTED WORK ON ITS AMNESTY BILL

C-SPAN failed to televise the beginning proceedings on a bill that would have more effect on Americans and future generations than any other bill this year.

But your NumbersUSA Capitol Hill Team was your eyes and ears. Special thanks to Van Esser, Chief of Staff of our Capitol Hill offices, for the reports below on what the various Senators said Thursday.


1. IN A NUTSHELL -- where things stand


Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA)and his committee began consideration Thursday of a 300-page draft immigration bill that provides for the biggest amnesty in the history of this nation, a new "temporary" worker program and 1.14 million new green cards annually for employment-based, family-based and student immigrants.

The Committee heard some Members' opening statements during a March 2 hearing on the proposal -- which has not yet been officially introduced as a bill, so no bill number is available.

Good news: Instead of moving quickly to get work done, the committee broke up as soon as the Senators had made statements. They won't meet again for another week.

While there had been earlier reports that there would be attempts at major amendments today, nobody seemed in a hurry to have to put themselves on public record voting for further flooding the country with millions more foreign workers. We believe that the extreme controversy that YOU have stirred with your phone calls and faxes this week -- and the media reports on your frenzy of activity -- are playing a part in Sen. Specter feeling uncertain on how to proceed.

THERE WERE 137,000 OF YOU REGISTERED MEMBERS OF THE NUMBERSUSA ACTIVIST WEBSITE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WEEK TO RELENTLESSLY PRESSURE SENATORS TO STAND FOR SENSIBLE IMMIGRATION POLICIES.

SINCE MONDAY, ANOTHER 5,000 AMERICANS HAVE REGISTERED WITH NUMBERSUSA TO FIGHT ALONGSIDE THE REST OF YOU!!!

The longer it takes to work up a bill, the better chance we have of killing an amnesty altogether in the Senate.

The seemingly impossible dream is that Senators become hopelessly logjammed over amnesties and guestworkers so that they finally just pass an enforcement bill to reconcile with the enforcement bill the House passed in December.

It's a long-shot, but that is what we are working for. in this email:
1. IN A NUTSHELL --where things stand

2. YOUR ASSIGNMENT FOR FRIDAY: Phone Judiciary Senators and comment on their comments
3. WHAT THE SENATORS SAID
.
actions in brief:
Look for special phone requests and faxes to send at your customized Action Buffet:
NumbersUSA.com/actionbuffet
.
donate now:
This faxing system is 100% financed by the voluntary generosity of the 120,000-
plus Americans who use it.

Please click here to make any sized donation to keep this grassroots phenomenon strong and effective.

2. YOUR ASSIGNMENT FOR FRIDAY: Phone Judiciary Senators and comment on their comments


You all have done an amazing job the first four days of the Specter-acular Senate Amnesty Battle. By keeping the phones and fax machines ringing, you made it clear to Senators and staff that their states are watching, that they can't just quietly vote to radically change all of American society without being held accountable.

But for the pressure to work, the phone calls and faxes cannot stop.

Really.

If the phones go quiet today (Friday) or next Monday or Tuesday, the Senators and their staffs will breathe a sigh of relief and think, "We can outlast them so that they eventually will get tired, stop watching and move on to another interest."

It is especially important that they know that every word they say and every action they take will receive comments from their constituents.

PLEASE CALL ANY OR ALL OF THE SENATORS BELOW AND COMMENT BASED ON THE INFORMATION WE GIVE YOU ON EACH.

You can reach all of them by calling this Capitol switchboard number:
202-224-3121


3. WHAT THE SENATORS SAID


Because we didn't have a tape recording or transcript, we cannot ensure that the quotes below are precisely accurate (thus, we have not placed them in quotation marks), but they are very close.

You can feel confident saying to staffers that Senator X was reported to have said ..... And then paraphrase what we provide or read directly.

For the most part, you will probably have a stronger effect today if you speak calmly and ask sincere questions, rather than jump all over the staffers. Also, please remember to always be as polite as possible to the low-paid, usually inexperienced staffers who talk to you.

In all cases, I hope you will emphasize some or all of these points:

A. America is flooded with nearly 50 million foreign workers, immigrants and their children right now (SOURCE: Census Bureau). It is insane to suggest that the country needs MORE foreign workers. Vote against all and any increase in Green Cards for permanent immigration.

B. The Senate needs to pass enforcement legislation that can begin to steadily drive illegal aliens to voluntarily go back home, bringing relief to the communities and occupations in which they currently reside.

C. Any amnesty that allows illegal aliens to stay legally in this country will attract millions more illegal aliens in the near future.

D. While there may be some rationale for discussing some expansion of a foreign guestworker program, there is no way to know how to devise such a program until the government can prove that it can enforce the law. Pass enforcement legislation now and then consider whether guestworkers make sense.

Sen. Graham (R-S.C.)

In his opening statements, he identified himself as a co-sponsor of the McCain-Kennedy giant amnesty bill. That bill is as bad as the Specter bill, but it also offers U.S. citizenship to nearly all illegal aliens.

The fact that Graham brags about his support for an amnesty is a sign of how out-of-touch he is with South Carolina voters. Many believe he is hoping to be the vice-president nominee on a ticket with Sen. McCain (R-AZ) in 2008.

He ran for Senate two years ago on a record as a U.S. Representative who was strongly against open borders. But as soon as he got to the Senate, he teamed up with McCain and has been disastrous for the working families of America who need a champion on this committee.

In surely one of the strangest comments of the day, Graham said he likes to play golf and sees a big Hispanic workforce there, suggesting, we suppose, that we need more open borders to keep his greens trimmed.

Nonetheless, he also said that no guestworker program can work until we control the border. I would suggest callers use that to point out that if he believes that, he will shelve the McCain/Kennedy bill because it would start the guestworker program before anything additional is done to control the border.

Ask that he work to pass border control legislation now. Then, as that law is being implemented and begins to show that it is successful, Graham can bring up his ideas about massively increasing permanent and temporary foreign worker programs.

Sen. Durbin (D-IL)

Perhaps thinking about all the wonderful pressure you folks in Illinois have been putting on him, he made the statement that we can't absorb all the people who want to come.

And he complained about the lack of enforcement against employers who hire illegal aliens.

We can't have an amnesty because it will encourage so many more to come, he said.

But then he talked about our need for expanded guestworker programs.

And blew it by saying that illegal aliens are essential because they provide cheap labor.

Perhaps it is just me but I sense that Sen. Durbin is conflicted in his thinking based on what his campaign contributors want and what he feels the people of his state want.

I don't think I need to spell out for you some of the things you will want to say to his staff.

Sen. Grassley (R-IA)

Grassley is one of the few good guys in the Senate. He usually is pretty good on immigration. We don't understand what happened, but his statements were horrible.

He said that we need to increase legal immigration to stop illegal immigration.

And he said that some of these guestworker proposals are not amnesties because people would have to pay as much as $2,000 to qualify to stay.

He is way off the reservation here. You might point his staff to our Jim Edwards' just-released study that shows that the more you increase legal immigration the more illegal immigration increases.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back106.html

And please help him understand that paying a fine does not keep something from being an amnesty. The penalty for illegal immigration includes having to leave the country. If a person pays a fine and stays forever in this country, that person has received an amnesty.

Sen. Specter (R-PA)

He seemed to lament that "amnesty has somehow become a dirty word."

I hope you will help his staff know that it indeed is a dirty word that shouldn't be uttered in public. It is a word that when spoken from the lips of Senators as a possibility causes thousands of additional illegal aliens to risk their lives to cross deserts, lock themselves in cargo containers in the hopes of obtaining that wonderful reward.

Proabably the worst thing the chairman said was that the committee's first job is to bring the undocumented workers out of the shadows.

Well, if you have a wrong-headed goal, you will adopt wrong-headed tools.

The problem in this country is not that we have 10-20 million illegal aliens living in the shadows. Rather, the problem is that the illegal aliens are 10-20 million more foreign workers and families than we need and want in this country.

It is their presence in this country much more than their status that harms America.

Bringing illegal aliens out of the shadows would not do one thing to relieve the congestion in our schools, housing, traffic, parks, hospital emergency rooms and communities.

We don't want to remove illegal aliens from the shadows. We want to remove them from this country.

In addition, removing illegal aliens from the shadows and making them legal will add tends of BILLIONS of dollars of costs to the taxpayers, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

Sen. Kennedy (D-MA)

This so-called champion of American workers said we need a guestworker program to fill jobs for which no Americans are available.

I guess his liberal concerns don't extend to the 50% of black American men who do NOT have a job -- or to the 12 million Americans of all races who have been actively seeking a full-time job and can't find one -- or to the tens of millions of Americans with lower education who are qualified only for lower-skilled jobs but need those jobs to pay a liveable wage. None of those groupings of Americans will get a decent shake as long as Kennedy works in lock-step with the greediest of corporations to drive wages down with foreign labor.

In another sign that Kennedy is one of the best Senators that today's corporate Robber Barons could hope to buy, he conceded that the age of borders and governments protecting their workers is over.

He said that a century ago we could have fortified our border but that we can no longer do that because of trade.

You may want to ask his staff if Kennedy has decided that the American labor market must now be globalized -- that is, Americans must compete with the global average on wages and working conditions and benefits.

Sen. Feinstein (D-CA)

She said some great things.

For example, she said that anything that comes out of this committee has to be able to be compromised with the House "or this is a useless action."

She seemed to recognize the absurdity of a Specter bill designed to add perhaps 2 million additional foreign workers and their families each year when the House bill was designed to actually REDUCE the total number of foreign workers arriving and living in this country.

She should be congratulated and encouraged to do everything possible to stand against the Specter/McCain madness.

But Feinstein left the reservation on ag workers. She said she supports practical border consideration but that we have to take care of supplying workers in one area where there is a shortage – agriculture. Agricultural industry depends on an immigrant work force and that’s where we need to start, she said.

She said she is drafting a bill that will be introduced soon that deals with guest ag workers.

Sadly, her bill apparently will be yet another amnesty proposal.

She would give U.S. citizenship to illegal ag workers who have been here from 100-150 days per year for each of the last 3 years. And they would be able to bring their families.

This is really bad stuff from a woman who has been one of the best Democrats in the Senate in standing against this kind of nonsense. At least, she says she would cap this amnesty at 900,000 over a three-year period.

She is running for re-election this year. Surely, she can win without the campaign money from the big growers out there. I hope you all will help her see how much better off she and the country will be without any amnesties.

Sen. Kyl (R-AZ)

I put Sen. Kyl in green (the NumbersUSA symbol for people who are working for reduced immigration) even though his comments were decidedly mixed.

We have to applaud him for saying some pretty smart things in the midst of colleagues who seem so clueless about the problems America is facing from immigration.

He said that illegal immigration is not just a matter of people seeking a job. He noted that assaults have increased 108% in AZ over the last year and that 10-15% of apprehended illegal aliens are criminals, and they’re the bad kind, rapidst, murderers.

He said we need to control our borders, clean up the database that tell us who is arriving and departing our country.

But then he pitched the bad parts of his Cornyn/Kyl bill that create a temporary worker program that lets illegal aliens become legal workers for five years before supposedly making them go back home.

On the other hand, he said we can't issue a high number of temporary work permits when we have high unemployment, recognizing some limits.

Sen. Kyl is a very smart Senator who seems to know the score on the border. But even though he is facing a tough election challenge this year, he can't seem to let himself escape the grip of the White House and national Republican operatives who insist on some kind of amnesty for illegal aliens.

Sen. Sessions (R-AL)

He noted that at some point in the debate in this committee, we need to decide whether we want to have people here illegally or not. It's not harsh to say to immigrants that they have to follow our requirements for living here.

Enforcement must come first, Sessions said.

OTHER SENATORS ON THE COMMITTEE

You may want to call the rest of the committee Members who either weren't there or didn't say anything. You may tell them that you think they should know how some of the comments of their colleagues struck you. Use this as a chance to tell staffers what you hope the Senator will do when they meet next week.

Sen. Leahy (D-NH)
Sen. DeWine (R-OH)
Sen. Hatch (R-UT)
Sen. Cornyn (R-TX)
Sen. Brownback (R-KS)
Sen. Kohl (D-WI)
Sen. Feingold (D-WI)
Sen. Biden (D-DE)
Sen. Coburn (R-OK)
Sen. Schumer (D-NY)

You can reach all of them by calling this Capitol switchboard number:
202-224-3121

Do you want more or less information?
Do you want fewer emails or to UNSUBSCRIBE from receiving any emails?

As a member of the NumbersUSA Action Network, you have four options about how much email and Alerts you get from us. You can change the frequency of our communication with you at any time by clicking here to go to your Registration Form. There you can choose among Total Activism, Moderate Activism, Limited Activism or No Email. If you feel like you are not getting enough information from us, be sure to change your registration to TOTAL ACTIVISM.

Update your NumbersUSA Interest Survey This may be a good time for you to make sure that you've let us know all of the areas of immigration reform in which you are interested. Click here to further customize your Interest Survey and the type of alerts you receive from us.

P.S. NumbersUSA's financial management meets all the criteria of the IRS as a
non-partisan, non-profit organization, and as an authorized charity of the
Combined Federal Campaign. Handling of donations is overseen and held
accountable by a Board of independent directors and by independent Auditors.