Keep Up Pressure

The "No Amnesty" pressure is working, keep it up!

The vote on cloture has now been delayed until Tuesday, and more Senators are wavering. Facts on the bill's provisions are here (the old number was S 1348, now it is S 1639).

But a few more have to be shown the light. Contact info for your Senator is here or here.

Talking points are here.

I just sent the following e-mails to my CT Senators:

Dear Sen. Lieberman,

I urge you to vote NO for cloture on S 1639, the flawed immigration bill.

While this is clearly a complex problem requiring careful solutions, the current bill is a mistake in that it does not first require border security and a demonstration of effective enforcement before contemplating the status of the illegal population -- this is simply unacceptable to most legal American citizens.

Because in the real world, we know that otherwise enforcement will remain the same old sham it is today. Fix that first, and then we are willing to discuss the terms of legalization, which are already too broad and generous in the current bill.

From the aptly named We Need A Fence,

The foundation of support for reconsideration of the Senate immigration
bill is crumbling. Just in the last two days, three major shifts have
occurred:

1. Senator Mitch McConnell, who had led the Republican effort to bring the bill back for reconsideration, announced that he was not personally committed to supporting it.

2. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who had been expected to support the bill in return for her amendment being added to the list of permitted amendments once the resurrected bill is back on the floor, announced that she would now oppose the bill, even if it includes her amendment.

3. Several unnamed Democrat Senators appear to have begged their leader, Senator Reid, to delay the cloture vote on the “motion to proceed” to consider S 1639, the new number for the Senate immigration bill, because they were feeling the heat from constituents opposing it.

As a result of these three developments, it now appears that the first vote in the reconsideration process will not occur until Tuesday, when just a few days ago it looked like it would occur today, Friday. We don’t think that delaying will work; each day, as the pressure builds, more and more Senators realize that supporting this bill will cost them votes the next time that they run.

THIS IS ALL THE DIRECT RESULT OF GRASSROOTS PRESSURE FROM YOU, THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. KEEP IT UP! CALL YOUR SENATORS, AND KEEP CALLING.

Go to We Need A Fence Contact for a list of each Senator’s Washington and State telephone numbers and website links.

The tide is turning in our favor, and you are the reason why. You are awesome!!

And NumbersUSA reports,

We need 41 Senators to vote NO on cloture next Tuesday or to not show up for the vote.

Sen. Johnson (D-S.D.) is still seriously ill and expected to be a no-show.

We believe we have solid commitments from 32 other Senators that they will vote NO on cloture that would allow the Kennedy/Bush amnesty (S. 1639) to come to the Senate floor for debate.

That would give us 33 of the 41 we need.

Congratulations to all of you who have elected Senators solidly in our camp or who have persuaded Senators to move to the anti-amnesty side -- those Senators in this list:

32 DEFINITE 'NO' ON AMNESTY CLOTURE
Many of you will find ways to express tremendous appreciation and to help solidify them so that no offer from the White House or party leadership can turn them at the last moment.

Alexander (R-Tenn.)
Allard (R-Colo.)
Baucus (D-Mont.)
Byrd (D-W.Va.)
Bunning (R-Ky.)
Chambliss (R-Ga.)
Coburn (R-Okla.)
Corker (R-Tenn.)
Cornyn (R-Texas)
Crapo (R-Idaho)
DeMint (R-S.C.)
Dole (R-N.C.)
Dorgan (D-N.D.)
Enzi (R-Wyo.)
Grassley (R-Iowa)
Hutchison (R-Texas)
Inhofe (R-Okla.)
Isakson (R-Ga.)
Landrieu (D-La.)
McCaskill (D-Mo.)
Pryor (D-Ark.)
Roberts (R-Kan.)
Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)
Sanders (I-Vt.)
Sessions (R-Ala.)
Shelby (R-Ala.)
Smith (R-Ore.)
Stabenow (D-Mich.)
Sununu (R-N.H.)
Tester (D-Mont.)
Thune (R-S.D.)
Vitter (R-La.)

12 SENATORS LEANING NO ON FINAL PASSAGE BUT PROBABLY LEANING YES ON CLOTURE (when it counts)
Please do everything you can to get to these Senators and help them understand what is at stake and where the citizens of your state stand.

Bond (R-Mo.)
Bingaman (D-N.M.)
Burr (R-N.C.)
Boxer (D-Calif.)
Cochran (R-Miss.)
Conrad (D-N.D.)
Ensign (R-Nev.)
Levin (D-Mich.)
Gregg (R-N.H.)
Nelson (D-Neb.)
Hatch (R-Utah)
Webb (D-Va.)

ALL OTHER SENATORS APPEAR TO BE PLANNING TO VOTE TO HELP PASS A BILL THAT WOULD BE:

largest amnesty for illegal aliens in history
largest increase in foreign labor in history
largest expansion of social welfare programs in history (to handle the 35-40 million -- mostly low-educated, low-skilled -- foreigners who would get Green Cards over the next 20 years alone

All those Senators need your constant phoning, as well. A few could still be brought to the side of American workers, students and communities and vote NO on the amnesty. And the rest need to be shown full wrath to help the others decide to stay on the side of the voters.

To head off accusations of xenophobia, NumbersUSA is careful to explain,

Nothing about this website should be construed as advocating hostile actions or feelings toward immigrant Americans. (Even illegal aliens deserve humane treatment as they are detected, detained and deported.)

Unfortunately, to write about problems of immigration is to risk seeming to attack immigrants themselves. Even worse is the risk of inadvertently encouraging somebody else to show hostility toward the foreign-born as a group.
...

To talk about changing immigration numbers is to say nothing against the individual immigrants in this country. Rather, it is about deciding how many foreign citizens living in their own countries right now should be allowed to immigrate in the future.

None of this is to suggest that no immigrants are scoundrels or contribute to problems of immigration because of their bad personal behavior. It is not unfair, nor does it constitute immigrant bashing, to criticize the behavior of specific immigrants who violate our laws or otherwise behave in a manner unworthy of guests who have been invited into this country.

It IS immigrant bashing, however, to ascribe those bad characteristics to whole groups of people based on their ethnicity or foreign-born status. All of us should be careful of the language we use so as not to inadvertently appear to be making such negative generalizations.

Not only is it ethically wrong to engage in such stereotyping, it is tactically short-sighted. There is much to suggest that most immigrants already among us would support reductions in immigration numbers. The reasons are not surprising. Virtually any reduction designed to help native-born Americans would be even more beneficial to foreign-born Americans. That is why so many immigrants are supporters of NumbersUSA.com.

Perhaps the greatest "immigrant bashers" are those Members of Congress who refuse to look at the abysmal conditions of so many immigrant Americans and who every year insist on adding more than a million more immigrants into their occupations, schools and communities.

Build the fence first!