(MY EXTENSIVE DISCUSSION OF THE ISSUES INVOLVED IN A 'KIDS AMNESTY' CAN BE FOUND BELOW THE RED ACTION BOX.)
Tuesday is when the massive bi-partisan push for a "DREAM-like" amnesty for children and young adults begins in the House.
Even our friends in Congress need to be reminded that illegal
immigration creates victims, and amnesties legalize the victimization.
The
hearing Tuesday afternoon reflects how intent the Republican House
leadership is on passing some kind of amnesty (although probably not for
11 million illegal aliens).
It
looks like no witness has been invited to speak up for all the
Americans who would be harmed by an amnesty -- particularly younger
Americans, and Black and Hispanic Americans.
 You are the witness for U.S. victims |
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Here are Members of the House Judicary Committee from your region.
Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.)
Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.)
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.)
Call 202-224-3121
TALKING OUTLINE
You
have your own ideas and opinions that you will want to convey, I'm
sure. But here is an outline of ideas from which you can also pick to
make your phone call as easy as possible.
1.
Say you are calling about the Tuesday committee hearing about a kids amnesty.
2.
Make the point that the Representative has a moral obligation to place
top priorIty on how such an amnesty might hurt vulnerable Americans,
especially those who would be competing directly in the legal labor
market with the amnestied illegal aliens.
YOU CAN STOP RIGHT THERE IF YOU WANT. THAT IS THE CHIEF MESSAGE WE WANT TO GET THROUGH TODAY AND TUESDAY.
3.
You may say that there can be no justification for adding more foreign
citizens into the legal labor pool to compete against unemployed
Americans.
OR
you may say that you have some sympathy for older teens and young
adults who were brought here illegally at a very young age but that
Congress must find ways to minimize the harm an amnesty would cause,
especially to young Americans.
4.
You may want to note that Americans under age 30 now have the lowest
labor participation rates in our country's history. And that the last
thing they need is more foreign-born workers competing with them.
OR
you may want to note that one of the reasons that college grads are in a
student debt crisis is because so few of them are finding jobs,
especially jobs that require a college degree.
OR
you may want to note that one of the facts about young black American
men that has been prominent in the coverage of the aftermath of the
Trayvon Martin case has been that so few have jobs that make them a part
of mainstream society. The last thing the government should be doing is
adding hundreds of thousands more foreign citizens to be fighting for
the same jobs.
At the very least,
we should make sure that every House member -- Republican and Democrat -- deals in detail with the two great requirements:
- ensure that parents never again put hundreds of thousands of kids into this situation
- minimize the harm of an amnesty to vulnerable Americans as much as possible.
You also may find something else in my blog below that you would like to discuss with staffers.
Right
now, we want to impress on all congressional offices that citizens are
viewing this "kids amnesty" issue in much more complexity than just YES
or NO. We need to challenge the staffs of these Representatives to
actually think about the consequences of moving forward with this
amnesty.
At
this moment, there is no legislation. So, there is no bill number. And
the point of these calls is not to say "vote no" but to to get staffers
thinking about the difficulties of creating an amnesty that doesn't
entice more illegal immigration and doesn't hurt the Americans who are
struggling the most.
Thanks for once again showing that you are among the best informed, most thoughtful activists out there.
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THE 4 QUESTIONS EACH REPRESENTATIVE MUST ANSWER BEFORE VOTING ON A 'KIDS AMNESTY'
YOU CAN JOIN A DISCUSSION WITH OTHER CITIZENS ABOUT THIS ANALYSIS AT: https://www.numbersusa.com/content/nusablog/beckr/july-18-2013/whats-missing-boehners-cantors-talk-amnesty-kids.html
1. What and who are responsible for putting the "kids" into a predicament that makes their amnesty case compelling?
2. How do you keep another generation of illegal-alien parents from putting their children in the same predicament?
3. Who might be harmed if an amnesty is granted?
4. How do you minimize the harm to U.S. citizens if an amnesty is granted?
WHO PUT THESE 'KIDS' INTO THIS PREDICAMENT OF LONG-TERM ILLEGAL RESIDENCY?
Speaker
Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor have made it fairly clear that they
want to give some kind of amnesty to illegal aliens who were brought
here when they were young.
I
would feel a lot better about the "compassion" of Speaker Boehner and
Majority Leader Cantor if they would acknowledge that they are trying to
clean up a mess made by:
- the illegal-alien parents
who knowingly violated their visitors visas or illegally crossed the
borders and kept their children here long enough for it to be a hardship
to go back to their home country,
- tens of thousands of employers who broke the law and provided jobs to the parents of these young illegal residents,
- Presidents Bush One, Clinton, Bush Two and Obama
who refused to aggressively enforce laws to punish the illegal
employers and allowed the illegal-alien parents to hold jobs for years
that provided the ability to sink their children's roots into this
country and diminish roots with their home country,
- the 1995-96 Congress
that was persuaded by corporate lobbyists to turn down legislation
containing the recommendations of the bi-partisan U.S. Commission on
Immigration Reform that would have prevented most of the illegal
immigration that has since brought the "kids" into this country,
- every Congress since 1996
that has refused to enact a robust and comprehensive E-Verify workplace
verification system to keep illegal-alien parents from being able to
earn a living to plant their kids long enough for them to forget their
home countries.
- all the religious, business, media, academic and rights organization voices that have fought nearly every enforcement effort
the last 20 years to halt illegal immigration and to keep foreign
citizens from illegally putting down roots here. All of them have
passively or actively encouraged millions of foreign citizens not only
to break our immigration laws but often to risk their and their kids'
lives in doing so.
Let's
urge Speaker Boehner and Leader Cantor to acknowledge that those are
the culprits who created the compelling victims that have captured your
compassion this week. If Boehner and Cantor don't acknowledge their
complicity, the American people have no reason to believe that you won't
push an action that will create more of the very thing you say you are
trying to solve.
The kids may be innocent, but there are a lot of guilty people in their stories.
HOW DO YOU KEEP ANOTHER GENERATION OF ILLEGAL-ALIEN PARENTS FROM PUTTING THEIR CHILDREN IN THE SAME PREDICAMENT?
You
don't repeat the mistakes that created the current predicament. You
halt rewards and incentives for people to live illegally in this country
for long periods. You make it much more difficult to get into this
country illegally and much easier for the government to track you if you
do.
Here's the list:
- No more jobs for unauthorized foreign citizens:
Mandatory E-Verify for every employer. Robust programs by the Social
Security Administration to use no-match letters and multiple-use
notifications to combat identity fraud and legacy illegal employment.
- No more benefits for unauthorized foreign citizens: An end to Earned Income Tax Credits and other public non-emergency benefits for people illegally in this county.
- Know who is in the country illegally:
Fully implemented entry/exit system for every visitor at every land
crossing, airport and seaport. This won't mean every visa over-stayer
will be immediately located, but they will be known and then identified
as soon as they try to engage any number of financial, government,
transportation computer systems.
- A truly secure border:
The exact criteria can be worked out. If all of the above are met, I'm
willing to be satisfied when the ranchers along the border say they and
their property now feel safe.
After
27 years of broken promises in seven amnesties, two other major
immigration bills and dozens of pronouncements during presidential and
congressional floor speeches, the American people don't deserve to keep
their country if they are willing to trust even one more promise about
enforcement.
We have learned that the only way to trust that the government will implement enforcement is when it is already implemented.
No
amnesty involving work permits and benefits can be considered for the
"kids" as long as any of the above has not been fully implemented. We
know from a quarter-century of experience that the minute the kids get
their amnesty the chief promoters of that amnesty will turn their
energies to blocking all additional enforcement.
To
grant amnesty before all the enforcement is implemented would be to
entice a giant new wave of illegal immigration of parents from all over
the world to get their own kids ready for the next amnesty.
WHO MIGHT BE HARMED IF AN AMNESTY IS GRANTED?
I'm not going to bother much with the nonsense that nobody gets hurt when amnesties are granted.
The
one or two million younger illegal aliens who might get an amnesty
would be competing directly with under-30-age Americans who many
economists fear will be a Lost Generation economically because of their
incredibly low labor participation rates. Every indication is that most
of the younger illegal aliens are less educated and will remain
less-educated whether or not they are legalized. That means they will be
competing for jobs with less-educated Americans who already suffer the
worst unemployment in the country and they will be seeking jobs in
occupations where real wages have been declining for three decades.
It
is quite possible to argue -- as I have for several years -- that large
numbers of young illegal aliens do indeed have compelling cases for
some kind of amnesty.
Those
Americans whose philosophy is one of radical individualism can argue
that these compelling cases deserve an amnesty regardless of the
consequences to the members of our national community.
I
argue, however, from a community-oriented ethic that the compelling
cases of the younger illegal aliens are still secondary to the
compelling cases of members of our national community who also suffer in
this economy and whose suffering would be made worse by an amnesty.
At
this point of the debate, large numbers of Americans can find no reason
to go any further in considering an amnesty; there simply is no
justification for inflicting harm on one's fellow citizens.
Others,
though, are interested to see if there is a way to minimize the harm so
that both kinds of compelling cases can receive relief.
HOW DO YOU MINIMIZE THE HARM THAT A 'KIDS AMNESTY' WOULD INFLICT ON VULNERABLE U.S. CITIZENS?
The
main harm of such an amnesty would be in the numbers. How many extra
potential laborers are being added to the legal labor pool?
Thus, the key way to minimize harm is to reduce the net additions to the labor pool.
Fortunately, the bi-partisan U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform identified two easy categories of immigration to eliminate:
- Chain migration of relatives who are not a spouse or a minor child.
- The
Visa Lottery that raffles off permanent work permits and path to
citizenship to people in countries that have the weakest ties to the
American people.
Chain
Migration was established in the late 1950s and opened to the entire
world in 1965, while the Lottery was established in 1990 in the bill
that created the Immigration Surge that continues to this day.
Neither
serves any national interest. Both fill the labor pools with foreign
citizens with almost no regard to education or skill.
At
the point that any amnesty might be implemented, there would at the
least need to be a reduction in green card categories to lessen the
future in-flow of foreign workers as an off-set to all the additional
foreign workers added through the amnesty.
* * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
These
are MY thoughts and not official positions of NumbersUSA. Our
membership is divided about whether the situation for many younger
illegal aliens is ever compelling enough -- and the guaranteed
enforcement and offsets ever great enough -- to justify a restricted
amnesty. These are the questions that I'm sure are running through the
minds of many House Republicans in whose hands the fate of a "kids
amnesty" bill lies.
At
the very least, we should make sure that every House member --
Republican and Democrat -- deals in detail with the two great
requirements (1) of ensuring that parents never again put hundreds of
thousands of kids into this situation, and (2) of minimizing the harm to
vulnerable Americans as much as possible.
* * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
None
of these ideas may be of any consequence at all this year, given the
signals from the Gang of Eight that they would not honor them even if
included in a House-passed amnesty.
Sen.
Schumer and his Gang of Eight made clear last week in their widely
reported meeting with corporate lobbyists and religious leaders what one
of their top strategies for August is: Persuade House Republicans to
allow a "kids amnesty" to come to the floor for a vote so the Senate
Gang can have it put into a Conference Committee where the Senate Gang
promised they would stuff it with most of the elements of S. 744.
Not
only does S. 744 grant amnesty to some 9 million more illegal aliens
who are not kids, but it has no offsets and, in fact, doubles the level
of immigration of foreign labor competitors for the American workers who
would be harmed by the amnesty. While it does make a few efforts at
stopping future illegal immigration of parents bringing their children,
most of the enforcement provisions have major loopholes and weaknesses.
Having
been warned by Sen. Schumer (D-New York), why would House leaders
Boehner (R-Ohio) and Cantor (R-Va.) play directly into the Gang's
strategy if they sincerely only want to amnesty the "kids?"
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