| This page describes the status of the House-Senate debate on immigration reform. It includes summaries and links to information you need to understand the process and legislation. If you have any questions or comments, please CLICK HERE. | ||||||||||||||
| Senate AgJOBS Fight Expected on Farm Bill Next Week | ||||||||||||||
(October 30) Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced last Friday that The Farm Bill Extension Act of 2007 (H.R. 2419) is likely to come up for debate on the Senate floor during the week of November 5. Recently, Leader Reid had promised to attempt to attach the AgJOBS amnesty for illegal farmworkers to the farm bill during floor consideration. CongressDaily reported this morning that although Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) supports "resolving immigration problems," he will "resist" efforts to add AgJOBS to the farm bill. By and large, this is the same AgJOBS amnesty proposed last year, which, if enacted, would reward an estimated 1.5 million illegal aliens with amnesty (plus their spouses and children which could push the total to three million or more). This measure also would provide amnesty for employers who broke the law by hiring illegal aliens. Pro-amnesty advocacy groups are telling their members that Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) have promised them that AgJOBS will be attached to the farm bill this fall and be signed into law.The Federal government offers the H-2A visa which allows farmers to import unlimited numbers of foreign agricultural workers for specific short-term work. Those complaining growers mostly bypass the H-2A visa program because they would have to pay an almost acceptable wage under the program, whereas wages for illegal aliens are far less. Occasionally, a news story about "rotting crops" mentions that H-2A workers are available, but quotes growers as saying that going through legal channels of immigration is too cumbersome. NumbersUSA has worked with some of the most pro-farmer Members of Congress to streamline the H-2A program, make it faster, more dependable and remove a few somewhat outdated requirements. However, the farm group lobbyists have failed to support reforms and, instead, have put all their efforts into an amnesty for the illegal workers their clients already are hiring. While NumbersUSA questions the need or the advisability of large-scale foreign agricultural worker importation, we support efforts to drive all such hiring through legal programs that are designed to minimize the negative effect on our American native and legal immigrant agricultural workers. It is time to revamp the H-2A program – not give amnesty to illegal aliens who, as history has demonstrated, often move on to non-agricultural professions and are replaced by new illegal workers. |
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On Labor-HHS Bill, Senate Limits Access To Social Security For Illegal Labor, But Backs More Foreign Worker Importation |
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Before final Senate passage, two amendments sponsored by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) addressing Social Security were adopted by wide margins. First, a prohibition on the use of funds appropriated by the bill from being used by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to pay its employees to administer benefit payments under a totalization agreement with Mexico, which would not otherwise be payable but for such an agreement, was adopted by a 91-3 vote. Then, senators approved, by a 92-2 count, an amendment to prohibit the use of the measure's appropriations to process Social Security claims based on illegal alien labor. Sen. Chuck Grassley's (R-Iowa) proposal to double (from $1,500 to $3,000) the fees employers who wish to import H-1B "high-skill" nonimmigrant workers must remit to DHS and deposits also was adopted by unanimous consent, while freshman senator Ben Cardin's (D-Md.) amendment cutting off refugee assistance to Iraqi and Afghans granted "special immigrant" status after six months was approved by a unanimous vote (92-0).
On October 16, by a 52-42 margin, senators voted to table an amendment (SA 3277) sponsored by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) to the commerce, justice, and science (CJS) spending bill (H.R. 3093), which, if adopted, would have prevented Federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants from being awarded to states and municipalities with sanctuary policies in place. If the Vitter amendment had been adopted, it is unlikely that states and cities with such policies would have passed up COPS funding (i.e., grants to state and local law enforcement agencies to advance community policing) to continue providing sanctuary to illegal aliens. Generally speaking, sanctuary policies prohibit municipal employees from notifying Federal immigration officials of the presence of illegal aliens in their communities. As a result, police may not report illegal aliens to the feds and, since the distinction between legal and illegal immigration is often blurred, these misguided schemes frequently enable illegal aliens to benefit from city services. Earlier in that debate, an amendment (SA 3295) offered by Sen. Ensign that would have increased funding to the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP) by $150 million was defeated upon being tabled by a 70-23 vote. This amendment would have reallocated funding from NASA (making this a contentious issue amongst senators with large space-derived constituencies in their home states) to SCAAP, which provides assistance to states for the incarceration of illegal aliens who commit crimes. Senators also rejected (also via tabling [50-42]) an amendment (SA 3313) offered by Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), which would have appropriated $75 million to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for general support of state and local law enforcement's assistance in the enforcement of Federal immigration laws. Unfortunately, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the majority's manager for shepherding this measure through the Senate, was successful in getting an amendment (SA 3311) adopted by unanimous consent that exempts any alien who has been present in the United States as an H-2B nonimmigrant worker for any one of the previous three fiscal years and who is returning to work as an H-2B from counting against the 66,000-per-year cap on H-2B visas. In other words, this provision could potentially triple the number of H-2Bs in the U.S. at any one time. Also adopted by unanimous consent:
Earlier in the debate, a proposal (SA 3213) by retiring Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) increasing the number of active-duty Deputy U.S. Marshals assigned to immigration-related matters (e.g., transporting detainees) by 50 per year, fiscal years 2008 through 2012 (subject to appropriations) was adopted by voice vote. |
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Judge Places Bush’s “No-Match” Initiative on Hold |
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Other promising measures in the package are designed to confront identification falsification and increase the use of the Basic Pilot program ("re-branded" as E-Verify) for workforce verification. The Administration says it will publish a regulation to reduce the number of documents employers can accept to verify identity and workplace eligibility, and will commence (without the promise of completing) a rulemaking to require all federal contractors to use E-Verify.
However, NumbersUSA is concerned that some of the "reforms" announced by the Administration may unnecessarily raise the numbers of guestworkers and could result in increased deficiencies in our national security. The president has directed the Department of Labor (DOL) to issue regulations to "streamline" the existing H-2B guestworker program for non-agricultural seasonal workers; this regulatory action could be used to bring in more foreign workers irrespective of whether American workers could be obtained at higher wages. The Administration's plan to "expedite" immigration background checks also is a concern, given its propensity to rubber stamp applications now. Speeding up the process could have serious national security consequences.
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Border Security Funding Agreed To; REAL ID Compliance Dollars Rejected; Some Senators Push Amnesties |
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Also on Thursday:
 On July 25, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Democrats used procedural tactics to stop an amendment sponsored by a group of 12 Republican senators – most notably, Sens. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). The amendment, which failed on a 52-44 partisan vote following Reid's point of order arguing that it added policy language to an appropriations bill, would have provided an additional $3 billion in "emergency" funding to cover border security concerns, such as:
The amendment also would have:
Following the amendment's defeat, Reid and GOP senators tried to work out an agreement under which the "emergency" border security funding would still be added to the bill. Those efforts were stalled when Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) objected as the agreement did not direct DHS to target visa overstays. However, early in yesterday's (July 26) debate, Reid, Cornyn, and Graham announced that they had reached an agreement and, subsequently, a revised funding amendment was adopted by an 89-1 margin. Also during the debate on July 25, Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Larry Craig (R-Idaho), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) indicated that they will back border security funding schemes that also include the AgJOBS amnesty (which would grant legal status to 1.5 million illegal alien agricultural workers) and the DREAM Act amnesty (which would be a rolling amnesty for illegal alien children). Their efforts may not bear fruit in the DHS appropriations debate, but they have suggested that they will offer these amnesties again in the future and, perhaps, as revised stand-alone measures; to that point, Reid "committed to doing something about AgJOBS." |
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| JUNE 29, 2007: Victory! Rule of Law and Voice of People Prevail as Amnesty/Guestworker Bill Falls Following Rejection of Cloture Click here to learn more |
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| NumbersUSA Urges Congress to Finish Bi-partisan Commission Protections for American Workers | ||||||||||||||
"In the assessment of the corporate lobbies," Beck testified, "an Attrition Through Enforcement policy depriving businesses of their illegal workers would threaten to collapse the economy, harming all workers and the national interest. But in the school of thought represented by the bi-partisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, the removal of millions of illegal foreign workers would open up jobs and raise the wages for American workers while strengthening the economy and serving the national interest." Beck emphasized, "Nearly 70 million people in the broad working age of 16-74 are either looking for a job and are considered unemployed, or have dropped out of the labor force altogether. That would be 70 million Americans without a job from which to find only 7 million to replace the illegal foreign workers. Furthermore, as they enter the workforce they would begin paying more taxes to take some of the tax burden off the 142 million."
Beck also addressed the question of whether native-born workers would, in fact, do the jobs that employers hire illegal aliens to do. "[M]any recent cases of workplace raids in meatpacking plants and factories in all regions of the country during the last few months have suggested that there are a lot of Americans who will take so-called foreigner work as is. In nearly every case, federal enforcement arrested or drove out large numbers of illegal foreign workers who were entirely replaced by American workers within a few weeks." As to the claims that illegal aliens benefit our economy, Beck pointed to recent Heritage Foundation research, which found that, on average, households headed by illegal aliens are net tax drains of approximately $18,000 annually. "When they leave the country," Beck said, "governments not only save the $18,000 per household, but they save on the formerly non-employed legal resident who has taken the illegal worker’s job and is now paying more taxes." Beck noted that the Jordan Commission found no valid reason why businesses must meet their labor needs through the mass importation of foreign workers. Indeed, that panel concluded that:
Beck summed up his remarks urging common-sense action on immigration. "With the abysmal statistics on widening gaps in income distribution and the plight of both our native and our foreign-born workers at the lower rungs of the labor market," he said, "it appears that the recommendations of the Jordan Commission are even more in order today than when they were made a decade ago." |
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| NumbersUSA’s Rosemary Jenks Testifies Before Congress | ||||||||||||||
The main thrust of her testimony was stressing that the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, or IRCA, failed to deter illegal immigration because it was an amnesty and that amnesties entice more people to break the law. She went on to point out that IRCA was based on two faulty premises that are still prevalent in today’s debate: (1) the only choices for dealing with the four million illegal aliens present at the time were either to order mass round-ups and deportations or to grant amnesty to most of them; and (2) our economy was dependent on the labor of illegal aliens. The first premise ignores a third, realistic option – Attrition Through Enforcement – which could have been chosen in 1986 and should be used today. The second premise disregards the fact that illegal aliens pose a net cost on our economy – as shown by a recently-released Heritage Foundation study – and that more than enough American workers would be available to do the work being done by illegal aliens if employers paid a decent wage. Nearly all the open-borders Members of Congress admit that IRCA was an amnesty and that it utterly failed to slow down illegal immigration. Over the past year, they have attempted to mask their pro-amnesty leanings by claiming new “comprehensive reform” proposals will succeed because they:
Today, however, Rosemary shot down these fallacies by simply pointing out to the subcommittee that every one of those items was also in IRCA and have actually worsened the situation in the ensuing 20 years! As such, there is no reason to believe that the “new” proposals will succeed this time in stopping illegal immigration. |
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before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law regarding the impact of immigration reform on American workers and the U.S. economy.