From: Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA
Date: Friday 23JUN06 1:30 a.m. EDT


More Good News ... House leaders emboldened by YOU & pushing for enforcement-only bill

SENATE BILL FOR AMNESTY AND MASSIVE IMMIGRATION INCREASE IS DEALT MORE BLOWS .......

....... Speaker of House is totally impressed by citizen pressure at a town hall meeting!!

Wait until you see the report below from a Hill staffer of the Speaker's comments in a closed session of congressmen/women.

As I predicted to you in my email Monday morning, the terrible Senate bill has further bogged down this week as U.S. House leaders have become increasingly emboldened by you citizens' phone calls, faxes, office visits and attendance at town hall meetings.

Suddenly this week, Speaker of the House Hastert announced that he wouldn't be immediately appointing House negotiators to hammer out a compromise with Senators in a joint Conference Committee. Rather, he announced a series of public hearings to be held across the country over July and August to get public feedback on the provisions of the Senate bill.

Hahahahaha.

Maybe the 63 hidden provisions in the Senate mystery bill that our Rosemary Jenks uncovered and exposed at the National Press Club (but with very little media interest) will get proper vetting from the American people.

This is such terrible news for the Kennedy/McCain/Bush open-borders folks who had hoped to ram their bill into law without the public truly discovering what was in it.

Even better, Speaker Hastert announced principles that should undergird House action and they were all about enforcement and nothing about increasing legal immigration or guestworkers.

WHAT PERSUADED HASTERT TO DO THIS?

Rep. Hastert (R-IL) has always voted very well but has not been very helpful as a leader. He has been much too eager to please the White House when it asks for favors and to help out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Nonetheless, he has often ended up helping block bad stuff in the House and was a big help in the end in passing the ban on drivers licenses for illegal aliens. But his behavior this week represents a whole new side of Hastert. And it is pretty apparent why he changed.

Check out this email from a Republican staffer to Rosemary describing the closed-door session Hastert had with Republican Members of the House.

Rosemary --

You may already have heard this, but it was too good not to pass along. In GOP conference this morning, Hastert started talking about an event he went to with several hundred of his constituents. He went on and on about this was in Illinois, in the heartland of the country, Illinois wasn't a border state -- and every question but one from his constituents was about immigration.

He then said this proves it's a national issue and not just a border state issue and it is really important. (Hastert, our fearless leader, moonlights as Captian Obvious.)

Technically everything that goes on in conference is supposed to stay confidential but my boss was going on about it and how he thought the meeting with his constituents made a huge difference to Hastert.

I thought you'd find it encouraging that all the hard work your minions are doing about bugging the hell out of these guys at public events is working.

You're outgunned, outspent, and outlobbied -- but you're winning. I am now officially cautiously optimistic.

-- (from a House GOP staffer)

As the staffer knows, we have been pushing all of you to try to attend any meeting where your Members of Congress can be found so you can ask questions, hold a sign or just applaud other people who say what you believe about immigration.

More and more of you are doing this.

Now, the entire nation owes a debt of gratitude to those northern Illinois voters who showed up at that meeting and so impressed the Speaker of the House!

We will continue to inform you on your Action Buffet corkboard every time we know your Senators or your Representative are going to be appearing somewhere in your area.

Please keep checking your corkboard at:

www.NumbersUSA.com/actionbuffet

Also, please keep telling us if you know of a meeting or appearance that appears to be something we may not know about. The only way we can inform everybody in a district about an event is if somebody tells us about the event ahead of time.

As for the hearings, some of your NumbersUSA staff have already been invited to testify. We will be sending notices to you about when and where they will occur so that many of you can attend and reinforce the position of no amnesty and reduced total immigration numbers.

Finally, I just have to note that after the Senate passed its monstrosity in late May, we got a ton of emails from people saying they were giving up and that no hope was left. You may recall that we continued to tell you that we believed we could beat this thing if we all kept fighting. Well, most of you kept fighting. Even I am a little surprised at how well things are working out at the moment. But I have no doubt that the only factor is the never-ending drum-beat of citizen complaint that Members are hearing.

Thanks for all you do,

-- ROY