Thread: American Conservative Union -> Information on S. 2611

I recieved the following email tonight:

__________

Senate about to vote on Immigration reform bill

This is perhaps the most urgent email Action Alert I have ever written to you, but you deserve to know all the facts about the Senate Immigration Bill, S. 2611.

As you know, the U.S. Senate will be voting as early as tomorrow on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611). Most of the talk from the media and many of the Senators has been about the fact that about 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants would receive amnesty.

However, little, if any, of the talk has been about the fact that CIRA would allow over 3 to 5 times the amount of legal immigrants to enter the our United States over the next 20 years than under present guidelines.

According to U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), if the current legal immigration level (950,000 a year for 20 years or 18.9 million over 20 years) is excluded from the total, the Senate bill could be described as increasing legal immigration by 54.3 million to 73.4 million over 20 years.

“Until now, most of us have focused on securing the border and deciding how to treat the illegal alien population already in the United States,” Sessions said. “Few, if any, of us have looked ahead to see what the long-term numerical impact of the bill would be. My staff and I have just completed such a study, and the results are shocking.”

Under present law, immigration levels would increase by 6%. The influx of immigrants provided for under S. 2611 would increase to the current U.S. population by almost 31%. Senators who vote for S. 2611 are compromising our safety and security.

“These are actually very conservative estimates,” Sessions said. “For example, for the low end, we assumed the caps would never escalate, and we only added an average of 1.2 immediate family members coming in with each alien worker. Additionally, our numerical analysis did not add in estimates of future illegal immigration flows, or include any estimates for chain-migration – the parents, brothers and sisters that new citizens can bring in on a permanent basis.”

Chain-migration occurs when an immigrant becomes a citizen. Citizens have a legal right to bring in family members other than spouses and children. They can bring in their parents, their adult siblings and the spouses and children of their adult siblings.

“You can see how the potential exponential growth impact of the Senate legislation will cause consternation on the part of Congress and the American people,” Sessions said.

The Senate bill would increase permanent future immigration into the United States in several ways.

What nobody seems to talk about:

The Senate bill is fatally flawed, and there are several reasons why the Senate should either rewrite it substantially or start from a clean slate. Among the problems with the compromise proposal are:

Cost: The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will increase the deficit by $29 billion in just five years and more than that in the years to come.

Categories of aliens that should be removed from the United States under present guidelines would be allowed to qualify for the mass amnesty program, including:

— Aliens with certain felony convictions or three misdemeanors;
— Aliens previously barred from receiving immigration benefits for life, because they filed a frivolous asylum application;
— Aliens who are under final orders of removal, or who signed voluntary departure agreements but have never been deported.

The broad and vague work requirements are an open invitation for fraud. No continuous or full-time work is required, and the department of Homeland Security must accept "reasonable inferences" of work as qualifying evidence that the alien is eligible.

Illegal aliens who do not qualify for the mass amnesty (because they have been here for less than two years) can qualify for the bill's new low-skilled "essential worker" program without ever leaving the U.S. In other words, no illegal alien will be left behind.

New "essential workers" do not have to be "essential" to stay in the United States. Once here, an alien simply can not be unemployed for "60 or more consecutive days." Therefore, "essential" workers have a legal right to remain in the U.S. if they are working as little as one or two days out of every two months.

The "essential worker" program is not a temporary-worker program. The bill contains no economic trigger allowing workers to be sent home when the U.S. economy dips. Because these workers are eligible for green cards as soon as they enter the United States, once they are here, they will never have to leave, and, possessors of green cards are on a direct path to citizenship.

The "essential worker" program is essentially uncapped. The 325,000 annual numerical cap automatically adjusts each time the cap is reached, providing 65,000 additional visas in the first year, and an additional 20-percent increase the next year. An additional 3.9 million low-skilled workers could enter the U.S. in the first 6 years. All will be eligible for green cards.

Currently, the annual employment green-card cap is 140,000 and family members count against that cap. Under the Senate bill, the number goes to 450,000 and family members may come and not count against the cap. This means the total employment-based green cards under the program alone will reach 990,000 annually! To create such a new program that will be larger than all other green-card categories combined without careful study and public input is colossally irresponsible.
The bill provides free legal counsel paid for by the American taxpayer to illegal-alien agricultural workers.

The bill reverses current law and allows illegal aliens to be eligible for in-state tuition rates, and compete with U.S. citizens and legal residents for Stafford loans, and other types of federal financial aid, such as work study.

If we can FLOOD the offices of the United States Senate with TENS OF THOUSANDS of messages from their own constituents, demanding that they VOTE NO on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611), maybe they will finally do something!

If you are as outraged at this, as I and thousands of other law-abiding Americans, they please click here and call your Senator and tell them they MUST VOTE NO on S. 2611


Thank you,

J. William Lauderback
Executive Vice President
American Conservative Union

I believe the "CBO" was flawed in their numerical numbers. It was brought out yesterday, that they failed to include some additionals. It's a govermental accounting. That speaks volumes as to its accuracy. In actuality, the cost would be much higher than they predicted.