HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE PASSES BILL TO KILL VISA LOTTERY

HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
PASSES BILL TO KILL VISA LOTTERY

Next Stop: House Floor (send more faxes)

The thousands of you who were watching our webcast of the proceedings that just ended know the good news:

The House Judiciary Committee voted 19-11 to pass H.R. 704, the SAFE for America Act to end the Visa Lottery.

Perhaps even more importantly, the committee refused several amendments that would have re-allocated the 55,000 visas a year to other immigration categories.

ACTION: Please immediately send a free fax to your own U.S. Representative to ask for specific support to get this bill to the House floor so it can be sent on to the Senate to finish killing this lottery program.

www.NumbersUSA.com/actionbuffet

While it is true that it is a form of insanity for a nation to raffle off 55,000 permanent work permits and paths to citizenship each year, we would gain very little if the lottery were killed and the overall legal immigration level stays the same.

The main point of killing the lottery is to reduce overall annual importation of permanent foreign workers by 55,000 a year.

So, congratulations to the majority of the committee for sticking with the bill's sponsor -- Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.) -- who fought amendments even from his own Party that would have re-allocated visas variously to chain migration and employment-based categories.

You can re-watch the Judiciary Committee deliberations, debates and votes -- and our NumbersUSA running commentary -- by going to our TV page at:

www.NumbersUSA.tv

You can read more about today and about the history and analysis of the Visa Lottery on my blog at:

www.NumbersUSA.com

This is the first time since 2004 that a congressional committee has voted to kill the Visa Lottery. The Goodlatte amendment passed on the House floor in 2005, but the Senate never took it up.

If we could get this signed into law, it would be the first time in 97 years that Congress would actually have reduced immigration numbers. Annual immigration has risen from less than 200,000 a year in the 1930s to a an average of more than a million a year since 1990.

Killing the Visa Lottery is a great place to start.

THANKS FOR SENDING FAXES TO MAKE SURE THIS HAPPENS,



Kathyet