Congress is doing it again

I found this on the Liberty Forum:

Liberal Dems At It Again!! Stop Them Now!

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From: Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA Date: Thursday 15MAY08 4:30 p.m. EDT Senate committee adds amnesty for 1.2 million illegal ag workers to Iraq spending bill -- PHONE NOW DEAR FRIENDS,

On a 17-12 vote this afternoon, the Senate Appropriations Committee added Sen. Feinstein's ag amnesty to the Iraq supplemental spending bill.

This bill could come up for a vote before the full Senate tomorrow.

Every phone of every Senator should be ringing off the hook as soon as I click SEND on this alert.

Please pick up your phone the minute you read this and call:
202-224-3121

Call the offices of both of your state's U.S. Senators and tell them:

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday afternoon committed an outrageous act of disrespect for our men and women in uniform and to the citizens of this country by attaching an illegal-alien amnesty to the Iraq spending bill.

Urge the Senator to vote and work to strip the amnesty from the Iraq spending bill on the floor.

You - or the Senator - may already oppose this spending bill. But if the Senator is inclined to vote YES on the Iraq bill, ask the Senator to definitely vote NO and send it back to committee if the amnesty is NOT stripped.

There is no need for an amnesty to provide growers with workers. There already is an H-2A foreign ag worker program that provides growers with an unlimited number of temporary workers if the growers agree to pay a decent wage and ensure that they go home at the end of the season. Feinstein is just trying to protect the abysmally low wages and bad working conditions that farmworkers labor under.

Here are additional talking points (and the names of your two Senators, plus additional phone numbers):

http://www.numbersusa.com/phones?ID=10121

Expect that many staffers will either have no idea what is going on or will be lying to you. Some of you were reporting to us that Sen. Feinstein's staffers were telling you that she had no inten tion of attaching an amnesty this afternoon at the precise time that the committee was voting on her proposal to attach!!!!!

Unless Senators see an outpouring of disgust and outrage similar to what you waged a year ago, they will interpret it to be safe to vote an amnesty this year.

Besides an estimated 1.2 million illegal alien ag workers, all the millions of illegal aliens in their families would apparently get an amnesty, also.

Good luck. You are the only force that stands between some semblance of the rule of law and massive rewards for illegal immigration.

THANKS,


P.S. We will be constantly adding new information as we obtain it on our home page at: www.NumbersUSA.com A lot of details are still fuzzy right now. Please keep checking back to our home page.

P.S.S. Just as I was starting to click the SEND button, this report arrived from The Hill news service:

The so-called Ag-Jobs amendment, sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho), would create a process that allows undocumented workers to continue to work on farms. Without the amendment, Feinstein warned that the U.S. would lose $5-9 billion to foreign competition, tens of thousands of farms would shut down and 80,000 workers would be transferred to Mexico.

The bill would sunset in five years.

NOTE FROM ROY: Open-borders supporters believe that if they can just help illegal aliens sink roots for a few more years that it will be impossible for the government later to try to make them leave.

My staff is just now reading through Feinstein's language and tell me that it looks like she will give all illegals the chance to adjust to permanent status and path to citizenship at the end of the five years.

"Agricul ture needs a consistent workforce," Feinstein said. "Without it, they can't plant, they can't prune, they can't pick and they can't pack.

"This is an emergency situation," she added.

The amendment was approved by a 17-12 vote with defections from both parties. Critics say the amendment amounts to amnesty for people who entered the country illegally. A broader comprehensive immigration overhaul, with a path for citizenship for the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, failed in a divisive Senate vote last year.

"No matter how one characterizes it, this enormous amendment still amounts to amnesty," said Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.). "I oppose amnesty. All these immigration issues should be addressed through the regular order."


P.S. We can triple our membership quickly if our members email their friends about us and they in turn email theirs. Polls show that most Americans agree with NumbersUSA's positions but, despite our recent rapid growth, most American voters still have never heard of us. You can help change that by forwarding this email widely. (Note: depending on your email provider, you may need to send this as an "attachment.")

Here is the article from the webpage:

<FONT face=Arial size=4> http://numbersusa.com/index
Senate Committee Passes Amnesty for Illegal Ag Workers

<SPAN class=discussionTEXTsuper>(May 15) At today's markup of the Iraq supplemental appropriations bill, the Senate Appropriations Committee committed an outrageous act of disrespect for our men and women in uniform and to the citizens of this country by adopting an amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that gives amnesty to illegal-alien agricultural workers. The copy of the amendment obtained by NumbersUSA indicates a maximum of 1.35 million illegal aliens, plus their families, could obtain "emergency agricultural worker status" for a five-year period. However, the amendment also provides for an adjustment of status, which paves the way for permanent legalization. The committee also adopted other immigration-related amendments, including one that drastically expands the H-2B visa program for non-agricultural seasonal workers.


A vote by the full Senate may occur as early as tomorrow, so please contact your Senators now to urge them to work to strip the amnesty from the Iraq spending bill on the floor, as well as the other amendments increasing immigration levels.

Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121The most important point to stress is that there is no need for an amnesty to provide growers with workers. There already is an H-2A foreign ag worker program that provides growers with an unlimited number of temporary workers if the growers agree to pay a decent wage and ensure that they go home at the end of the season. Feinstein is just trying to protect the abysmally low wages and bad working conditions that farmworkers labor under.

Click here to send a free fax to Congress.

BTT

Bumping this with an article...plus I changed the title from "They are doing it again" to "Congress is doing it again" so this hopefully gets more attention.

Bicycle Junkie, if you want the title changed back, please let me know.

<table width="100%" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" bordercolor="#000000" height="43"><tr><td bgcolor="#cccccc"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><font size="4" color="#0000000">Senate Uses Iraq War Spending Bill to Advance Illegal Alien Amnesty and Cheap Labor for Employers, Charges FAIR</font></b></font></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#ffffff" height="2"><div align="left"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><font size="2">http://sev.prnewswire.com/aerospace-defense/20080515/DC2265515052008-1.html</B>

WASHINGTON, May 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A supplemental appropriations bill intended to provide funding for the war effort in Iraq is being used to promote amnesty for illegal aliens and more low-wage guest workers for powerful business interests. The addition of two amendments to the Iraq War Supplemental Appropriations bill will mean that in order to provide emergency funding for our troops in Iraq, senators will be forced to approve an illegal alien amnesty and expand guest worker programs that harm American workers.


The Senate Appropriations Committee today included an amendment offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that would grant a five-year amnesty to 1.35 million illegal aliens working in agriculture, plus their spouses and children, and allow agribusiness to freeze wages for new guest workers at 2007 levels for the next three years. The five-year amnesty would likely be a prelude to permanent legalization for these illegal aliens.

A second amendment adopted by the committee, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), would vastly increase the number of unskilled H-2B guest workers permitted to work in this country. The Mikulski amendment would reinstate the exemption for returning H-2B workers from numerical caps on the program.

"What we witnessed today in the Senate Appropriations Committee is a cynical attempt to use Americans' support for our men and women in Iraq to advance blatant special interest legislation that benefits powerful business lobbies," charged Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). "Tying amnesty for illegal aliens and still more cheap labor for powerful business interests to support for our troops in Iraq is an unconscionable abuse of the appropriations process."

The American public has repeatedly rejected the idea of granting amnesty to illegal aliens and has adamantly opposed increases in guest worker programs that undermine American workers - especially in difficult economic times.

"It is always inappropriate for Congress to sneak unrelated and unpopular legislation past the American public by attaching it to other bills, especially appropriations measures," said Stein. "But to choose this particular bill - the one that pays to maintain our military personnel who are fighting overseas - demonstrates the lengths that this Congress will go to satisfy the demands of big money interests."

FAIR is calling upon the full Senate to strip these two amendments from the bill before putting it to a vote. "The U.S. economy has been shedding jobs at an alarming rate over the past several months. There is no justification whatsoever for this sort of massive amnesty and increase in foreign guest workers," concluded Stein.

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Here's a list of the Senate members on the appropriations committee:

Alexander (R-Tenn.)
Allard (R-Colo.)
Byrd (D-West Va.)
Bennett (R-Utah)
Bond (R-Mo.)
Brownback (R-Kan.)
Cochran (R-Miss.)
Craig (R-Idaho)
Domenici (R-N.M.)
Dorgan (D-N.D.)
Durbin (D-Ill.)
Feinstein (D-Calif.)
Gregg (R-N.H.)
Harkin (D-Iowa)
Hutchison (R-Texas)
Inouye (D-Hawaii)
Johnson (D-S.D.)
Kohl (D-Wis.)
Landrieu (D-La.)
Lautenberg (D-N.J.)
Leahy (D-Vt.)
McConnell (R-Ky.)
Mikulski (D-Md.)
Murray (D-Wash)
Nelson (D-Neb.)
Reed (D-R.I.)
Shelby (R-Ala.)
Specter (R-Pa.)
Stevens (R-Alaska)

http://wwwwakeupamericans-spree.blogspot.com/2008/05/dianne-feinstein-reportedly-going-to.html

<table width="100%" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="3" bordercolor="#000000" height="43"><tr><td bgcolor="#cccccc"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><font size="4" color="#0000000">Feinstein, Lofgren push for immigrant workers</font></b></font></td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#ffffff" height="2"><div align="left"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="4"><b><font size="2">http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/16/MNMG10N3V6.DTL</B>

(05-16) 04:00 PDT Washington - -- Two of California's most immigrant-dependent industries - agriculture and Silicon Valley - are pushing narrow measures through Congress in an effort to employ foreign workers at opposite ends of the labor market, people who pick vegetables and the postgraduate engineers and scientists of Silicon Valley.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein attached a farm guest-worker program to the giant Iraq spending bill Thursday in a last-ditch effort to remedy a shortage of workers in California's produce fields as the federal government continues to crack down on illegal immigration and the political climate proves hostile to more sweeping measures.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, teaming with Republicans, is pushing several bills to give permanent residence to top engineering talent.

"It's an emergency," Feinstein said of the farmworker situation. "If you can't get people to prune, to plant, to pick, to pack, you can't run a farm."

Her addition to the Iraq spending bill would give temporary legal status to 1.3 million farmworkers over the next five years, but it would provide no path to citizenship or permanent residency. It passed the Senate Appropriations Committee 17-12 on Thursday.

Workers applying for the program would have to prove they had worked on U.S. farms for at least 150 days or 863 hours, or had earned at least $17,000 during the last four years. They would have to remain working in agriculture for the next five years, when the program would expire.

Citizenship on hold
The move marks an end for now to efforts to give farmworkers a path to citizenship after a sweeping immigration bill crashed in the Senate last June. Feinstein has been trying all year to attach a bill called AgJobs but has met nothing but dead ends.

Western Growers, representing California farmers, and the United Farm Workers of America union joined in backing the bill. Western Growers President Tom Nassif said large growers are accelerating efforts to move their farming operations to Mexico. The 15 growers out of several hundred who responded to a survey and were willing to talk about their plans moved 84,000 acres worth of crop production to Mexico this year, twice as many acres as last year, Nassif said.

"Once the acreage moves to Mexico, it's there permanently," Nassif said. "Much of the remaining open space in California is agricultural land. If it's not farmed, we'd be growing condos or cementing it over with office buildings."

The tightening of the border has made it increasingly difficult, dangerous and expensive for laborers to return to the United States if they leave, disrupting the traditional circular flow of farmworkers from Mexico to California's fields in the Salinas and Central valleys. Most farmworkers arrive illegally, and farmers complain that an existing guest worker program called H2A is cumbersome and ineffective. Feinstein's bill would streamline that program's rules.

Threat of fines worrisome
Growers are apprehensive about a new administration effort, temporarily stopped by a federal court, that would require employers to match workers with a valid Social Security number or be heavily fined. The Department of Homeland Security is refining the rule to get past court objections.

United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez said farming is facing "a very real emergency" and applauded the bill as a "critical but temporary fix to a much larger problem."

Feinstein acknowledged that the chances of getting the bill all the way through Congress, even attached to war spending, is "uphill all the way."

On the other side of the Capitol, Lofgren is teaming with conservative Republicans to try to push similar discretely targeted measures for Silicon Valley. She has dropped efforts for now to expand the controversial H-1B program for temporary high-skilled workers, which again this year ran out of its 85,000 visas on the first day they were released. Lofgren said the program needs changes, given its wide use by Indian offshoring companies.

5 low-key bills in works
Instead, Lofgren has introduced a passel of five small-bore immigration bills, among them one that would allow master's and doctoral graduates from U.S. universities to apply immediately for permanent residence, skipping the H-1B program altogether.

"Most people would agree if you get your Ph.D. in engineering from an American university, you've got something to offer this country," Lofgren said. "Right now, we have no ability to keep those people here ... we send them home to compete against Americans. It would make more sense to keep them here to help us compete."

Lofgren has even teamed up on one bill, to "recapture" unused permanent resident slots, with Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican famous as the author of immigration crackdown legislation, never enacted, that was so harsh it led to the nation's first large-scale Latino protests in 2006.

"What's happened is that with the shortage of very high-level people, multinational companies are sending their project teams offshore," Lofgren said. "Not only the top hot shot leading the team, but all the support jobs that go with that hot shot. Among the people I've met is a guy who spent four years at Harvard, seven at Stanford's engineering school, then did practical training and has been here six years on an H-1B, and he's in limbo. He's an extremely talented person and has no idea what his future is going to be. He's being recruited in Australia and Europe, and he's ready to bail out. What he needs is not more temporary time."

Members of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group of business executives spent Thursday lobbying Congress on high-skilled immigration and tax breaks for solar energy and research and development.

"This is no time to say to high-skilled workers in a global economy that we don't want you," said Barry Cinnamon, chief executive of Akeena Solar in Los Gatos. "We're happy to have that argument with anyone."


Feinstein's guest-worker program
Sen. Dianne Feinstein has proposed a program designed to remedy a shortage of workers in California's produce fields. Here's how it would work:

-- Immigrant workers would have to prove they had worked on U.S. farms for at least 150 days or 863 hours or earned at least $17,000 over the past four years.

-- They would have to remain working in agriculture for the next five years.

-- The program would end after five years.


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