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Setting the Record Straight -
Tancredo's Brilliant Plan for Stopping Illegal Immigration
and Reducing Job Loss
by Linda Muller
For the Cause - forthecause.us





Tancredo offers a comprehensive plan for dealing with the pernicious effects of illegal immigration on our society. Open border advocates dismiss it as racist. Corporations scoff it as unworkable. Labor unions cannot fathom it. Some conservatives find fault with it. Yet Tancredo manages to plug most of the policy and enforcement holes that are responsible for the current untenable situation. His proposal may not be right for any particular group, but it is right for the United States of America.



Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has come under massive criticism for his REAL GUEST Act of 2005, which seeks to provide remedies for many of the nation's most intractable illegal immigration problems, but without resorting to an amnesty or a promise of citizenship. Open border advocates, of course, condemn Tancredo's proposal with all the usual racist rant.

What is surprising, however, is the severity of criticism coming from a small number of Tancredo's traditional base. A few of these columnists and activists mistakenly claim the REAL GUEST Act:


Acknowledges a necessity for guest workers
Allows visa numbers to be set by employers
Does nothing to stop illegal immigration
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Your Top 10 Questions Answered....
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H.R. 3333
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Telegraph -India
Tancredo Calls for H-1B Visa Cut in US
The H-1B visa program has no serious safeguards to protect American workers from being replaced and is abused to employ cheap foreign labor, said Tom Tancredo. The visa limits cannot be justified now when so many skilled Americans are unemployed, he said, referring to the 6 per cent unemployment in the US...


These criticisms, raised by a few, nevertheless have been resonating through the nation's conservative talk shows and print media as if Tancredo has somehow sold them out. Nothing can be further from the truth…

In HR 3333, Tancredo lays out a practical blueprint for dealing effectively with illegal immigration from multiple vantage points. The proposal also includes the strongest enforcement mechanisms and penalties for violations of any plan yet introduced in either the House or Senate.

Guest workers

Critics say Tancredo's proposal is a sellout to corporate interests because it acknowledges America's need for guest workers.

While Tancredo does allow for the potential future use guest workers if market conditions warrant - meaning a palpable rise in the wages for American workers, none of the corporate interests that he has purportedly "sold out to" have any interest in advancing his proposal because there is no advantage in it for them. Furthermore, the REAL GUEST Act does not include any amnesty component or path to citizenship, and it delays implementation of his temporary guest worker program until long-promised enforcement mechanisms have been implemented and proven effective in stopping illegal entry and preventing temporary workers from staying.

Restructuring the visa program

In Tancredo's proposal, employers really do not control the number of visas that will be issued to temporary workers. In fact, the proposal puts stricter prerequisites on the issuance of such visas - while leaving little room for bureaucrats to supplant the administration's policy desires for the law.

In HR 3333, Tancredo proposes a restructuring of the current "H" non-immigrant visa programs, which will continue normal operations until his new program is implemented.

Tancredo would eliminate the current "H" visa classifications that have proven so troublesome in recent years, including:


H-1B (high-tech)
H-1C (nurses)
H-2A (agricultural)
H-2B (seasonal)
The current system is very lax in terms of requiring employers to prove there is a shortage of qualified American workers. In fact, big corporations can easily lobby Congress for visa increases to the point where the program is virtually meaningless. Tancredo's proposal replaces these non-immigrant visas with a single "H" non-immigrant visa for potential workers, using the same strict market test and employer prerequisites for both skilled and unskilled workers.

Foreign workers would be pre-screened before they would be made available to employers for additional, short-term labor, while ensuring that U.S. workers are not harmed. The mechanism works like this…

Employers would be required to file a petition for an "H" worker with the Department of Labor. "H" non-immigrant visas would be issued only when no qualified and lawfully present workers are currently available to perform the work, and when no such workers could be trained in less than one year. In other words, if no Americans are immediately available to do the work, the next step would be for the employer to train them to do the work before resorting to the last-gasp option of seeking approval for guest workers.

The market test in Tancredo's bill does not mean that new "H" visas will be authorized any time American workers' real wages are rising, as some critics have asserted. Only when real wages rise for six (6) consecutive months, truly indicating a labor shortage, can "H" visas be allowed and then only in that region and job skill category. If wages became stagnant - even for a single month, indicating a loosening labor market, "H" visa petition approval is shut down again. Thus, the number of "H" visas expands and contracts with long-term market conditions - and not at the whim of an oft-lobbied Congress.

Tancredo would limit the stay of "H" non-immigrants to 365 days during any two-year period, but allow them to renew their visas upon the expiration of each two-year period. This ensures that workers retain the status of "guest" and that they do not make this country their new home.

But Tancredo does not stop there… He would require every alien seeking "H" non-immigrant status to sign a legally enforceable affidavit attesting to their understanding that they will be ineligible to adjust to lawful permanent resident status or to change status to any other non-immigrant classification. Immigrant workers also would be prohibited from bringing spouses and children with them into this country.

Current law would be amended to clarify that a child born in the United States to an "H" non-immigrant parent is not a U.S. citizen at birth, unless the child's other parent is a citizen or a lawful permanent resident.

Any alien who violates a term or condition of their "H" non-immigrant visa would be barred from receiving any immigrant or non-immigrant visa for 10 years. This provision of Tancredo's proposal would include visa overstays.

Adding bureaucracy

The same critics of the current lax enforcement of our southern border and who are calling for 15,000 additional border patrol agents, now take Tancredo to task for wanting to add more bureaucracy to the federal government.

Tancredo's proposal calls for more immigration inspectors, detention and removal officers, and criminal investigators for benefits fraud. He also wants more attorneys for the ICE Legal Program to free up the logjam that is responsible for so many illegal aliens being set free to roam about society.

It is simply a fact of life that it takes more people to secure our borders as it does to enforce the law after illegal aliens get here. Both require a stronger federal response and there's no way this can be avoided, particularly after the problems posed by illegal immigration have been allowed to fester for so long.

Stopping illegal entry

Let's be honest - there is no way to totally stop illegal immigration. A 50-foot wall would help, but people will always find a way. What we can do is rigorously discourage this type of illegal activity by taking away the incentives that make it worthwhile to sneak into this country in the first place. One way to do this is to go after employers who routinely exploit illegal immigrants for their cheap labor.

HR 3333 increases the fines on employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens. Company executives would be subject to imprisonment if they are found to have engaged in a pattern or practice of such violations.

When half of a company's workforce is composed of illegal aliens -- such as the Cargill meat packing plant in Schuyler, Nebraska -- who have purchased fraudulent social security cards and birth certificates, that would constitute an undeniable pattern of illegal activity. Just one successful prosecution of a company executive would send a clear message to the rest of the business community.

Tancredo also wants to establish identification standards for receiving federal benefits by requiring states and localities to meet certain minimum standards for issuing birth certificates. While many states are enacting birth/death registries already, which will help, we are only as strong as the weakest state's law, which is why Tancredo demands uniform adherence to a standard.

Unlawful presence in the U.S. would be a felony, punishable by fine, imprisonment, and asset forfeiture. Violators would be automatically ineligible for a non-immigrant work visa. In addition, state and local law enforcement officers are reminded of their inherent authority to help enforce federal immigration laws.

These provisions of HR 3333 alone would greatly stem the flow of illegal aliens into this country, plus assist law enforcement at all levels by giving them the proper tools to arrest and prosecute illegal aliens, instead of just relying on an absurdly under-resourced and seemingly disinterested ICE bureaucracy.

These measures, if implemented, would make it difficult for illegal aliens to live, work, and remain in the United States illegally. These measures are designed to force attrition -- most illegal aliens who face a high risk of apprehension, are unable to find work and are unable to profit from their presence in this country will have no choice but to return to their home countries voluntarily.

Tancredo's proposal also calls for the presence of U.S. troops at or near the border to deter illegal border crossings. Troops conducting training exercises on the border would make an effective barrier to illegal immigration.

He would also amend the criminal statute barring use of the Army and Air Force as a posse comitatus to prevent unlawful entry into the United States.

Minimizing other impacts on society

To relieve the pressure on our healthcare system, Tancredo would have Congress appropriate funds to fully reimburse providers of federally mandated emergency medical treatment of illegal aliens.

The current policy of not fully reimbursing healthcare providers for these costs has resulted in the closure of 84 hospitals in California alone in recent years. When hospitals close, this financial burden merely gets shifted to the hospitals that have managed to stay afloat. Eventually, they will succumb as well, denying even more people access to timely healthcare and driving medical costs even higher.

To qualify for the reimbursement of emergency medical costs, Tancredo would have the healthcare provider collect and report to DHS all citizenship information and other non-clinical information concerning each illegal alien treated.

The bottom line

Tancredo offers a comprehensive plan for dealing with the pernicious effects of illegal immigration on our society. Open border advocates dismiss it as racist. Corporations disdain it as unworkable. Labor unions cannot fathom it. Some conservatives find fault with it. Yet Tancredo manages to plug most of the policy and enforcement holes that are responsible for the current untenable situation. His proposal may not be right for any particular group, but it is right for the United States of America. That's all we want from our elected representatives.



As co-founder of For the Cause, Linda Muller has spent the last 15 years working for various conservative candidates and causes, including Rep. Tom Tancredo's Team America and the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan. She can be reached at this email address.



Permission to reproduce this article in whole or in part is granted, providing that credit is given to the author and For the Cause - www.forthecause.us - is cited as the source.


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