From: Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA
Date: Thursday 20OCT05 3:30 a.m.

Senate Judiciary just approved selling U.S. tech jobs to foreign workers

You must phone your disgust to Senators now ....

.... if you want to have a chance at stopping this travesty from passing into law.

.... if you want any hope of deterring these same Senators from future acts of aggression against American workers, you must call them now so they can feel the public condemnation.

The Senate Judiciary Committee just voted for Sen. Specter's (R-PA) plan to sell hundreds of thousands of additional work visas and permanent green cards to corporations for them to distribute to foreign workers so they can take American high-tech and professional jobs from American workers.

Their rationale was that the government needs the money.

These Senators behave this way because they sincerely believe that people like you will not hold them accountable ... that you will not even raise your voice, make a phone call, send a fax or take your fury to a talk show.

If we are ever to get some relief for American workers, we must overwhelm these sell-out Senators NOW.

1. Call these Senators at these phone numbers

The most important call for everybody is Sen. Specter who is the chairman of the committee and who invented this latest sell-out of American skilled workers.

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Pennsylvania
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Sen. Specter, Arlen
(202-224-4254)

Be sure to call any Senator from your own state.

If you have time, next call Senators from states that adjoin yours.

These are the Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who allowed Specter's plan to sell American jobs to foreign workers.

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Delaware
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Sen. Biden, Joseph
(202-224-5042)

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Illinois
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Sen. Durbin, Richard
(202-224-2152)

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Kansas
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Sen. Brownback, Sam
(202-224-6521)

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Massachusetts
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Sen. Kennedy, Edward
(202-224-4543)

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New York
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Sen. Schumer, Charles
(202-224-6542)

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Ohio
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Sen. DeWine, Mike
(202-224-2315)

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Pennsylvania
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Sen. Specter, Arlen
(202-224-4254)

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South Carolina
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Sen. Graham, Lindsey
(202-224-5972)

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Texas
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Sen. Cornyn, John
(202-224-2934)

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Utah
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Sen. Hatch, Orrin
(202-224-5251)

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Vermont
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Sen. Leahy, Patrick
(202-224-4242)

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Wisconsin
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Sen. Feingold, Russell
(202-224-5323)
Sen. Kohl, Herb
(202-224-5653)

2. What to say on the phone

I think you can pretty well figure out for yourself what to say.

1. Let them know that you know what this Senator allowed the Senate Judiciary Committee to do today. Tell the staffer who answers that you are calling about the Specter/Kennedy proposal to sell massive new amounts of foreign-worker green cards and work visas to corporations in order to reduce budget deficits.

(We do not have any recorded votes to give you at this time. So don't use the words that the Senator "voted" for this. Rather, use the words that the Senator "allowed" this. We have left off the phone list the names of Senators who we believe did something to oppose Specter's plan.)

2. Let them know why you think Specter's plan is a travesty to American students studying for scientific, engineering and high-tech fields and a travesty to all Americans already in those fields.

3. Give you own connection to the issue.

4. Finish with a succinct statement such as: I oppose any action that increases green cards or visas for foreign workers. Give American workers a chance. Reduce all immigration.

3. The Spectre/Kennedy plan
to offset the budget deficit by selling American professional jobs to foreign workers

Senate Judiciary Chairman Specter (R-PA) and Sen. Kennedy (D-MA) have pushed through the committee a plan that is so callous that you may have difficulty believing it is true.

Because of the profligate spending by Congress and the President in recent years, each congressional committee is now charged with coming up with big spending cuts or big revenue increases.

The Judiciary Committee has now decided to balance their part of the budget mess on the backs of unemployed and underemployed high-tech and other professional workers -- and on the backs of American students who are currently studying to enter those occupations.

The plan by Specter and Kennedy is to sell hundreds of thousands of American professional jobs over the next several years to foreign workers -- or more precisely, to sell them to corporations which will then be allowed to import foreign workers instead of having to hire Americans.

See excerpt from the Congressional Quarterly Article below.

4. The CQ Today article explaining the Specter/Kennedy sell-out of American workers

CQ TODAY

Judiciary Committees Offer Dueling Proposals on Charges for Visas for Savings Targets

By Michael Sandler, CQ Staff

The House and Senate Judiciary committees hope to meet their relatively small mandatory savings targets by charging fees for visa programs that benefit businesses.

However, their initiatives differ enough to have the business community favor one and oppose the other.

The two committees must produce $300 million in savings over the next five years, a tiny fraction of the $34.7 billion in overall reductions called for in the budget resolution (H Con Res 95).

********

The business community favors an alternative proposal by Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

Specter's plan ... would allow the federal government to go back to October 1991 and recapture all unused H-1B visas ÂÂÂ* issued for specialty occupations that require a bachelor's degree or the equivalent.

Those visas would be re-issued and assessed a $500 fee. The estimated 60,000 unclaimed visas issued each year would generate $30 million a year, or half the amount needed over the five-year budget reconciliation period.

The rest would come from reclaiming unused employment-based immigrant visas for professional workers, going back to 2001. A $500 fee would be added to all employment-based visas.

5. NumbersUSA analysis of specifics of the Specter/Kennedy plan

As soon as we know the details of what the Senate Judiciary Committee did today, we will let you know.

We are aware, for example, that Sen. Sessions (R-AL) and Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) were successful in moderately limiting some of the damage that Specter proposed.

Your NumbersUSA Capitol Hill Team says that the Specter/Kennedy plan proposed for Thursday's vote would have done the following:

1. It would raise the annual cap on permanent employment-based immigration by changing the formula as follows: employment-based visas = 140,000 + any unused family-based visas from the previous year + (the lesser of 90,000 or unused employment-based visas from any prior year).

2. It exempts the spouses and children of employment-based immigrants from counting against the numerical cap, beginning in 2004. (In 2003, workers got 36,210 visas, and their spouses and children got 45,927 visas. Total visas could have more than doubled under this bill.)

3. It adds a fee of $500 per petition for most employment-based visa petitions.

4. It allows alien spouses and children of citizens to adjust to Legal Permanent Resident status if the citizen abused them, died, or lost or renounced their citizenship; and it allows alien spouses and children of LPRs to adjust to LPR status if the LPR abused them or died.

5. Anytime the H-1B cap is reached, the lesser of 60,000 or any unused visas in any prior years are added to the cap.

This proposal follows an alarming pattern of Senators constantly using immigration to hammer American professionals in information-technology, health care, science and engineering. Last winter in an otherwise wonderful REAL ID bill, Sen. Hutchison (R-TX) blindsided all of us in a Joint Conference Committee by adding tens of thousands of permanent greencards for foreign nurses and other foreign professionals.

These actions usually are at the request of the all-owerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce for whom greed has no limit.

Nothing will change. The sell-out will occur. Senators will be encouraged to continue to find creative ways to knock down American workers. ....

UNLESS ......

Unless you make that phone call TODAY.

Only when these Senators hear a wall of noise from American voters that they demand NO MORE INCREASES IN IMMIGRATION -- ONLY REDUCTIONS IN IMMIGRATION -- will they stop these every-few-months shenanigans.

-- ROY