Amnesty Alert!
By Greg L | 19 May 2008 | National Politics, Illegal Aliens | 14 Comments
Looks like Congress is at it once again, trying to impose an amnesty for illegal aliens that the voters time and again have said they do not want.
From our friends at NumbersUSA:
Friends,
The country is in great danger this week of a major amnesty for illegal aliens. The threat level is extremely high. We are on red alert. Defeating this amnesty will not be easy. The odds are against us. But we have overcome odds like this before and won. We can do it again with your help. Your country needs you.
I am not just cheerleading when I tell you that we can beat this amnesty ONLY if all of you send the faxes and make the phone calls we’ve posted on your Action Buffet corkboard. Please go there immediately.
And ONLY if you enlist as many of your friends, relatives, neighbors and colleagues as possible by forwarding this Alert to them.
Especially important is that you pick up the phone and make the calls to your two Senators that we’ve requested.
Phone Number
202-224-3121
DETAILS ON THE AMNESTY
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 17-12 to attach an amnesty to the Iraq supplemental spending bill. The amendment that passed provides a 5-year visa for up to 1.35 million illegal agricultural workers—but the cap of 1.35 million does not include spouses and children, who would bring the total amnesty to a total of about 3 million.
Rosemary Jenks (Vice President, Government Relations) spent the weekend analyzing the Feinstein AgJOBS amendment. She has outlined the most egregious aspects of the amnesty here. You won’t want to talk about the AgJOBS amnesty without reading this first. In fact, I recommend printing a copy and reading from it as you phone your Senators or talk radio stations. Find it online here.
In short, the AgJOBS amendment would require the Department of Homeland Security to grant “emergency agricultural worker status” (i.e., amnesty) for up to five years to as many as 1.35 million illegal aliens, plus their spouses and children, if the illegal alien:
Could show by “a preponderance of the evidence” that he worked 863 hours or 150 work days (defined as 5.75 hours of work per “work day”), or earned at least $7,000 in agricultural employment between January1, 2004, and December 31, 2007;
NOTE FROM NUMBERSUSA: In other words, the illegal alien would have to show that he was illegally employed in agriculture for a grand total of less than 22 weeks during a four-year period! And he can prove his employment history “by producing sufficient evidence to show the extent of that employment as a matter of just and reasonable inference.”
Filed an amnesty application with a “qualified designated entity,” or with DHS directly if he is represented by an attorney or a nonprofit organization, during an 18-month application period that would begin six months after enactment of the amnesty;
NOTE FROM NUMBERSUSA: No illegal alien is permitted to file an application for the amnesty without assistance from an attorney or an advocacy group—a “qualified designated entity” is defined as a labor or employer association or “any such other person” with “substantial experience” in filing adjustment of status applications.
Was not a known terrorist or convicted criminal; and
NOTE FROM NUMBERSUSA: Criminals would only be barred if they had been convicted of one or more felonies or three or more misdemeanors, so a couple of convictions for domestic violence or drunk and disorderly are fine, since those are generally misdemeanor offenses. And, of course, terrorists-in-waiting—those who have not yet committed a terrorist act or been caught with other known terrorists so they could be added to the watch list—likely would have no trouble qualifying for this amnesty, just as Mahmud Abouhalima, an illegal-alien cab driver in New York, qualified for the 1986 agricultural amnesty before going on to drive a bomb into the World Trade Center in 1993.
Paid a “fine” of $250.
Once an illegal alien met these minimal qualifications, he would be entitled to:
- Bring his spouse and children here to join him, or legalize their status, if they are already here illegally;
- Official U.S. government identification documents, including a valid social security number—with which he would be able to apply for a driver’s license—and a work permit (spouses would be allowed to apply for work permits, as well); and
- Immunity from prosecution for committing social security fraud if he had been working illegally with a false or stolen social security number.
WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT’S NEXT?
Last Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee added several immigration amendments to the version of the Iraq Supplemental they were marking up.
The immigration amendments include:
First was the Feinstein AgJOBS-lite amendment, which passed by a recorded vote of 17-12;
Second was a Mikulski H-2B amendment–for the next three years, it would exempt from the annual cap of 66,000 any H-2B workers who were admitted during the previous three years. (The impact on the numbers could be exponential–they could rise from 66,000 in FY 2008 to over 400,000 by FY2011.) This passed by a recorded vote of 23-6!
Third was an amendment by Sens. Murray and Gregg to “recapture unused” employment-based visas from the past couple of decades. Since any employment-based visas that are not used in one year are added to the number of available family-based visas for the following year, there are no “unused” employment-based visas, and so there are none to “recapture.” However, Murray and Gregg’s deceptive manipulation of visa numbers would add an estimated 218,000 (total) employment-based visas to the annual cap of 140,000, until they are all used (again!). This amendment passed by voice vote.
Finally, Sen. Leahy offered an amendment to reauthorize the investor visa program. This, too, was approved by voice vote.
On the same day, the House voted down its version of the Iraq Supplemental. Since all appropriations bill must originate in the House, the Senate cannot move their bill to the floor until the House passes a version and sends it to the Senate. A new Iraq Supplemental has not yet been put on the House floor schedule, but our Capitol Hill team expects that they will move one soon after their return on Tuesday.
The Senate has to wait for a House version of the bill which means it could come to a vote in the Senate as early as Wednesday or Thursday. That means we have until at least Wednesday to saturate the Senate with faxes and phone calls opposing the amnesty.
That is why we are asking you right now and every day this week to go to your Action Buffet corkboard and take every AgJOBS-related action possible.
YOUR FAXING AND PHONING IS GETTING NOTICED
Since we first alerted you to this amnesty threat on Thursday of last week, the more than 625,000 of you in the NumbersUSA Action Network have sent over:
182,000 Faxes!
TAKING THE MESSAGE TO THE AIRWAYS
Last summer when we defeated the “comprehensive” Senate amnesty bill, talk radio was widely cited as one of the factors in that defeat. In order to get the message out to a larger audience about this outrageous amnesty attempt, NumbersUSA representatives have been on talk radio shows since Thursday telling people about the amnesty and answering questions about it. This is a great time to use Rosemary’s AgJOBS handout to contact talk radio stations in your area and tell them about the latest amnesty push.
THANK YOU
We have received a number of emails from some of you expressing major frustration with our elected officials as a result of this latest amnesty move. You have every right to be frustrated, but don’t let frustration cause you to throw your hands in the air and give up. We have beaten the odds and massive amnesties before and we can do it again with your help. The challenge is great, but not insurmountable.
The opinions expressed here are solely the views of the author, and not representative of the position of any organization, political party, doughnut shop, knitting guild, or waste recycling facility, but may be correctly attributed to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. If anything in the above article has offended you, please click here to receive an immediate apology.
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How do we find out who is on the committee so we can email them as well?
When we called Webb’s office, one of his staffers said this was not amnesty and that we didn’t know what we were talking about.
She was quite abrasive, which means Webb doesn’t care about his constituents - he will do whatever it takes to build the great Democrat Plantation, where government tries to tell it us it must think for us because we aren’t capable of thinking for ourselve.
Webb is spending more time writing and promoting his new book and doing interviews than “Senating.” It’s time too boot him out of office and elect a Senator who speaks FOR the people, not AT them.
Senator Webb never responds to my faxes or letters. Guess since I am not a veteran I don’t matter.
I agree, he doesn’t speak for me. I will really miss John Warner when he retires. He has helped me on several issues.
I don’t know about ag-jobs at all. But I do know that they really wasted VISAs for legal residents. You may do the math or watch a house hearing from USCIS and DOS. They testified that the wasted visas is a real and it is due to administrative bottlenecks. The list of people waiting for their turn is as long as freeway I-90.
http://appropriations.senate.gov/members.cfm
That is a link for the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. They approved legislation sponsored by U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho) that would provide emergency relief to the nation’s current agriculture labor shortage.
The legislation was offered as an amendment to the Iraq supplemental spending bill.
ladyxx said on 19 May 2008 at 8:46 pm:
Senator Webb never responds to my faxes or letters. Guess since I am not a veteran I don’t matter.
I am a veteran and he doesn’t respond to me either. Guess he didn’t learn from “the great communicator” when he was appointed Sec. of the Navy. Webb has no concerns about illegal immigration and the same goes for Warner. Warner did have to courtesy to answer my letter about illegal immigration but his response was more or less…..”we need immigrant workers to pick the apples in Virginia….” Glad to see he is retireing but we will probably get someone no better in his place.
I just called both and left messages. The staff members were really interested in hearing my opinion…. NOT. It is a shame these two blow hards support criminals. I wonder if they would feel the same if they lived next to a house that was full of illegals?
An Email from FAIR
Amnesty Amendments Set to Hit the Senate Floor Today
Call Your Senators NOW!!
As we reported last week, during the Senate Appropriations Committee mark-up of the Iraq War Funding Bill, Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Larry Craig (R-ID) successfully attached a version of AgJOBS onto the bill. This special interest legislation is intended to protect sources of cheap labor by granting 5-year amnesty visas to 1.35 million illegal aliens plus their spouses and children. To see a summary of the amnesty portion of the Feinstein-Craig amendment, click here. THE SENATE IS SET TO BEGIN DEBATE ON THE IRAQ WAR FUNDING BILL AS EARLY AS TODAY!!!! FAIR is urging all members, activists and friends to call their Senators NOW and urge them to strip all immigration amendments from the bill.
If that weren’t enough, the Senate Appropriations Committee also saddled the Iraq War Funding Bill with:
* An amendment authored by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) that will dramatically expand the number of unskilled H-2B guest workers entering the U.S. each year;
* An amendment authored by Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) that will make approximately 218,000 more green cards available for multinational executives and so-called “highly skilled workers” by “recapturing” visas from as far back as 1994; and
* An amendment authored by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) that grants a 5-year extension to a program that helps wealthy investors get green cards.
PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATORS NOW AND URGE THEM TO STRIP ALL IMMIGRATION AMENDMENTS FROM THE IRAQ WAR FUNDING BILL!!! As soon as you have called your own Senators, please also call Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). These two leaders are the most powerful, influential, and able to strip these disastrous amendments from the Iraq War Funding Bill. When you call these Senators, please tell them:
* The American people overwhelmingly rejected amnesty for illegal aliens in 2007;
* You are outraged the Senate is once again attempting to sneak amnesty and other immigration amendments aimed at appeasing corporate interests into an unrelated appropriations bill;
* The debate over the funding for the troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan should not be held hostage by the corporate cheap labor interests in Washington, DC!
To find your Senators’ contact information, click here
http://www.fairus.org/site/R?i=PSevpA1nMbIoLJm7b37xuQ…
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)
DC Office (202) 224-3542
District Office (702) 388-5020
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
DC Office (202) 224-2541
District Office (502) 582-6304
I have been sending faxes and calling each day. I hope enough citizens call with their outrage about what Congress has done.
If you can’t get in touch through the DC offices, call the local offices and leave a message with a staffer:
DC Office of Senator John Warner
Washington, DC
202-224-2023
Midlothian Office of Sen. John Warner
Midlothian, VA
804-739-0247
D.C. Office of Sen. James Webb
Washington, DC
202-224-4024
Arlington Office of Sen. James Webb
Arlington, VA
703-807-0581
I just spoke with Senator Majoriy Leader Reid’s aide and she indicated that she believes the amnesty language will be stripped from the bill.
I have always received replys from Warner, Webb, and Allen on this issue. The important thing is to contact your Senator. You can go to senate.gov and bring up your Virginia Senators, which provides an email link.
You can paste the numbersusa email message there, or do it through numbersusa.com
http://www.numbersusa.com/faxcenter?action=preview&ID=10119
Thanks in advance!
Once Obama or Mccain get in office and the Democrats have free reign over everything political. They are going to shove amnesty down the throats of Americans. I fear there is going to be a day that people get tired of calling, faxing, emailing, sending letters. And when we stop they will pass every form of amnesty they can think of. It is truly scary.
Sahdman, we will need to put together our version of a million man march when that day occurs. I’m serious; it will take a peaceful demonstration of us by the hundreds of thousands to show these lawmakers how important this issue is to us. I respectfully suggest to BVBL, NumbersUSA, the Minutemen, and other concerned groups that they start planning this type of organized protest now. We know for sure that, no matter who wins the presidential election, the next president will push an amnesty program to a Congress that will likely be run by Democrats. I can’t think of any Dems offhand in the Senate or House that are actively opposed to amnesty. Hope I am wrong about that, by the way….