Thanks to all who called Congressional offices! Looks like we're not quite out of the woods yet, but we should know more tomorrow.

Read on....


From: Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA
Date: Thursday 7DEC06 5:45 p.m. EST

Your phone calls are making a real difference -- Cornyn/Microsoft currently stymied


DEAR FRIENDS OF AMERICAN PROGRAMMERS, ENGINEERS, NURSES, PHYSICAL THERAPISTS AND SCIENTISTS,

Our citizen network did quite a job again today.

I cannot predict. But as the Senate offices begin to close their phones down for the evening (even as the Senate continues to do business), our friends on the Hill are feeling much more confident that we will wake up tomorrow morning and find that Sen. Cornyn and and the tech industry lobbyists will NOT yet have succeeded.

Some, though, believe Cornyn will make another attempt tonight to get a vote on his bill to almost double H-1B visas and employment-based greencards next year. Once the phone lines are down, however, you just have to take a rest and know you did what you could and hope that your efforts were enough to pull us through this evening.

Your thousands of phone calls made a major impression on all Senate offices and on both Republican and Democratic leadership offices in the House.

Our Capitol Hill Team is hearing from many staffers that this has been one of those "Phone Phenomenon" days in which one issue practically ties every office up in knots.

AND NEARLY 100% OF THE CALLS ARE ON OUR SIDE -- AGAINST HELPING THE TECH COMPANIES, UNIVERSITIES AND HOSPITALS TO USE MORE FOREIGN LABOR TO DEPRESS THE WAGES OF THEIR AMERICAN WORKERS

You may not have any idea how important that has been.

Perhaps most importantly, it has made our best Senator allies exceptionally determined to block Sen. Cornyn (R-TX). Our latest nose count is that nobody is backing off their "holds" that are keeping the Cornyn SKIL Act legislation from reaching the floor of the Senate.

Cornyn and the tech industry lobbyists continue to try to strike deals with the Senators to get them to remove their HOLDS. But backed by what they see as an overwhelming constituency knowledge of the issue and constituency opposition to increased foreign importation, the "holding" Senators are not budging. We are unaware of any of them accepting a deal to change their position.

The reason individual Senators are able to exercise such power with these holds is because Cornyn has to get a lot of normal precedure waived in order to bring up his bill at the last minute like this.

Our understanding is that Majority Leader Frist (R-TN) could go ahead and bring Cornyn's bill to the floor even with the holds if he wants to. But then he would have to get at least 60 of the 100 votes to break the holds of their colleagues -- which is kind of a personal thing.

The more that you make this bill seem totally radioactive the less likely Sen. Frist will want to end his Senate career on such an explosive note, or that 60 Senators would want to vote to break the holds.

A big thank you to all who have helped again today. There are hundreds of thousands of households this evening spread across the country that will have a much happier Christmas if we succeed in blocking the threat to their jobs, wages and standard of living that Cornyn's bill represents.

Our nation's nurses, physical therapists, scientists, engineers and programmers have studied hard and worked hard and invested considerable money to be able to do these jobs. Why should our government import massive numbers of foreign workers (which no independent study has shown are needed) when that action would cause so many middle class American households to suffer?

At NumbersUSA, we spend a lot of our time championing better treatment for the poor. But we also believe in the protection of middle-class Americans. You who have acted today have done a great service to these households.

I expect to have marching orders for you first thing tomorrow morning based on what the situation has become by that time.

THANKS,

ROY

P.S. If you didn't read Prof. Norm Matloff's San Francisco Chronicle op-ed today, please do so now because it explains so well why we consider this fight against major increases in legal foreign workers to be as important as our fight against illegal immigration.

Read the article here:
http://www.numbersusa.com/interests/hightech.html