Senate Sneak Thieves Again Advancing AMNESTY!

May 22, 2008
 <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O />

Last Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted 17-12 to pass the Iraq War funding bill to the full Senate with a massive Illegal Alien AMNESTY attached. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) submitted the AMNESTY amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008, a bill described by Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.VA) as "an emergency supplemental for the wars and for meeting critical needs (emphasis mine) here in America." Because the appropriations bill includes so-called "must pass" funding for the Iraq war, it will be next to impossible to defeat; but if the AMNESTY provisions are not stripped, this bill will grant AMNESTY to approximately 3 million illegal agricultural workers and their families for at least the next five years. Please take immediate and continuous action until these provisions are removed.
There are many reasons Senator Feinstein's AMNESTY proposal is a really bad idea, including:

1. Senator Feinstein took an oath to "protect and defend" the United States, and that includes you and me (and our access to work) regardless of the state in which we reside.
2. There is NO NEED for an Ag AMNESTY program; there is already an H-2A Ag worker program which provides plenty of temporary foreign nationals to U.S. growers. The rub is, growers must agree to provide a decent wage, and the workers must GO HOME at the end of the season.
3. As acknowledged in Senator Byrd's official remarks at the war supplemental mark-up last week, "The U.S. economy is in trouble…since March, 2007, the number of unemployed has increased…to 7.8 million (some assert the correct number is closer to 14 million)…1.35 million of which have been out of work at least 27 weeks."
4. The qualifying criteria for AMNESTY are extremely low; applicants need only prove they earned $7,000 in Ag from 2004-2007, or worked 863 hours in Ag from 2004-2007, or worked at least part of 150 days in Ag during the same period.
5. Chairman Byrd even "implore(d) Members not to offer amendments (to the bill) that are controversial and not germane to this measure," to no avail.
6. It is wholly inappropriate to attach AMNESTY to a support bill for the very troops tasked with defending our nation.

Senator Feinstein, along with Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) and Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), are claiming American farmers cannot harvest their crops and feed the world without AMNESTY for illegal aliens. How stupid do these folks think Americans are? We've all heard these Pollyannaish cries for several years now, yet past harvests have not rotted in the fields. America does not need AMNESTY for illegal invaders just to eat!
If Senator Feinstein wants to represent the people of Mexico, or any other nation besides the United States of America, she should renounce her U.S. citizenship, and her oath of allegiance to the U.S., and move.
Please take immediate, and unrelenting, action. Time is of the essence; we expect the full Senate to vote on this bill as early as Wednesday, May 21st.
ACTION TO TAKE
Contact the following: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
  Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin
  Assistant Minority Leader Jon Kyl
  Your Senators.
Call (202) 224-3121, and the Capitol Switchboard will direct your call to any Senate office you request.
Tell these Senators:

• Any AMNESTY provisions must be stripped from this bill. Any kind of AMNESTY is unacceptable, and an AMNESTY for foreign workers to take jobs during our economic recession is a real slap in the face of their constituents.

SEND THIS MESSAGE TO AT LEAST TEN MORE PEOPLE!