Analysis of the new White House/GOP Senator immigration plan

[JohnK 0]

HE RELEASE THURSDAY OF OUTLINE OF NEW NEGOTIATED REPUBLICAN PLAN IS A GIGANTIC DEVELOPMENT THAT MUST BE ADDRESSED IMMEDIATELY.

In the section below, I will discuss at some length the apparent meaning of the new plan, as well as some surprising strengths of it.

NumbersUSA is avoiding a knee-jerk reaction. My main intent at this late hour is to provide you with as credible information as possible upon which to base your actions.

Everybody -- the Senate, the House, the White House, the media, leaders of both Parties -- will be judging the public's Friday reaction to see what to do next.

If a high percentage of citizens in the NumbersUSA Action Network don't react on Friday, that will be taken as a green light to start rushing through a huge increase in immigration and rewards for illegal aliens.

Your NumbersUSA Staff Team has been meeting with top congressional leaders day and night this week to try to bolster the resolve of Congressional Members on our front line to stand their ground.

It truly is up to you today (Friday) to prove to our strong allies and our wobbly-kneed allies that the public wants dramatic immigration REDUCTIONS and NOT huge immigration INCREASES.

White House sources have told the news media that they believe they have the 25 Republican Senators committed to this outline that it will take to help the Democratic majority get an amnesty bill through Congress.

The question now is whether all 25 will stick with the plan once their constituents learn the details -- and whether Sen. Kennedy (D-Mass.) will be willing to accept this proposal over his much-more open border plan.

QUICK OVERVIEW

Our analysis here is based on the 23-slide Power Point show the White House has been giving Members of Congress the last couple of days, and on our interviews with Members who got the presentation.

* This new plan espouses several key elements that NumbersUSA has been pushing for years. It calls for (1) an end to chain migration, (2) an end to the lottery, (3) strong enforcement against future illegal immigration, (4) no path to green cards for new guest workers, (5) no family accompanying guest workers. It appears that all of your years of faxing, phoning and visiting -- and your staff's personal visits to Members and to the White House staff -- have broken through on several fronts.

* But in nearly every case of good elements, the plan either lacks the details to ensure that these are implemented as advertised, or it has other provisions that knowingly or inadvertently undermine those good elements.

* It rewards most of the 12 million illegal aliens with the very things they broke immigration laws to obtain.

* It is nearly oblivous to the costs of low-skilled foreign workers to American taxpayers. It would impose trillions of dollars of costs on American citizens. Inexplicably, it would dramatically increase the number of low skilled foreign workers in the country, even though a new Heritage Foundation study has found that each household headed by such a worker saddles Americans with a net of $22,000 extra in welfare and other government benefits.

* It would increase annual immigration by at least 50%. Current annual immigration already is running 400% of traditional U.S. averages. This plan would boost annual numbers to at least six times what they were in the 1950s and 1960s.

* It is totally insensitive to the deterioration in the quality of life for most Americans who would see their communities forced to accommodate another 200 million people because of immigration by mid-century. And there is not a single indication of concern about what a half-billion American population in 2050 would do to natural habitats in the U.S., to global environmental factors or to the nation's ability to have enough energy supplies.

* The needs and lives of American workers are largely ignored. This is a plan drawn up almost entirely for the sake of businesses desiring to globalize their laborforce in order to hold wages down toward global averages.

In this email:

1. Quick Overview of new Bush/Republican Senators immigration plan

2. Is it an amnesty for 12 million illegal aliens?

3. New Heritage Foundation findings on costs of foreign workers for Americans

4. Lousy results emerge from lousy White House principles.

IS IT AN AMNESTY FOR 12 MILLION ILLEGAL ALIENS?

YES.

Buried in the 23 pages of White House talking points is the promise that nearly all illegal aliens are expected to get a path to U.S. citizenship!

It basically makes liars of many of the staffers you have talked to by phone this week who claimed that there is no way their boss would ever support an amnesty and who claimed their boss wasn't involved in amnesty discussions with the White House.

Any Senator who comes out in support of this new White House plan will be in support of an amnesty.

You need to make sure your Senators' offices know that when you call today.

Reading the White House outline, it is clear that the negotiators tried very hard to create enough hoops and loops so they could try to claim they aren't supporting an amnesty.

But consider this:

* Nearly all of the official 12 million illegal aliens would be allowed to immediately apply for a "Z Visa." That visa allows them to live and work legally in the United States for three years. That is what they broke the law to obtain. And they would get it. All they have to do is pay a $2,000 fine and a $1,500 processing fee. How many billions of people in the world would gladly pay $3,500 for the chance to work in the U.S.?

* The illegal aliens can renew the Z Visa every three years -- for the rest of their lives. They just have to pay the $3,500 every three years. But in order to get the first renewal, the illegal aliens would have to show progress toward assimilation by passing an English and civics test.

* The illegal aliens with Z Visas are fully eligibale for free, taxpayer-subsidized secondary education and emergency social service.

* At any time, illegal aliens can apply for a path to U.S. citizenship. The only thing that will slow them down is they will have to leave the country to be screened for security and will have to pay a $2,000 application fee and another $8,000 when their permanent residency is approved. The White House's Power Point slide states that nearly all illegal aliens are expected to eventually win this permanent residency and path to U.S. citizenship.

NEW HERITAGE FOUNDATION FINDINGS ON COST OF FOREIGN WORKERS FOR AMERICANS

Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has just finished a study that makes the White House plan for big increases in low-skill labor sound like a plot to bankrupt America.

The study looked at households headed by high-school drop-outs.

It found high school drop-outs accounted for about:

* 9% of native-born Americans

* 25% of legal immigrants

* 50% of illegal aliens

The new Bush/Republican Senator plan would dramatically increase the number of legal immigrant drop-outs and make sure that millions of illegal drop-outs stayed in our country.

The cost to Americans will be staggering.

Rector found that the share of federal, state and local costs for each of these high-school-dropout households is around $43,000 a year.

But he subtracted out their share of defense and interest on debt, concluding that:

THE INCREMENTAL FEDERAL, STATE AND LOCAL EXPENDITURES FOR EACH HOUSEHOLD HEADED BY A HIGH-SCHOOL DROPOUT IS AROUND

$32,000 a year

in government support

The Heritage Foundation scholar then painstakingly dug through government data to find every kind of tax that these households pay. He even included money spent on lottery tickets ($686 per year) and excise taxes, as well as FICA and property taxes and many others.

He said he was a bit surprised to find that these high-school-dropout households pay more taxes than he expected:

Nearly $10,000

a year in taxes

Nonetheless, the bottom line is that these households require:

$22,000 each year

in net taxpayer subsidies

Why would our elected officials want to import foreign workers who require such huge infusions of taxpayer cash?

And why would they be proposing increasing that flow?

Even more astounding is that they want to force American taxpayers to continue to subsidize those who have come here illegally or broken our laws to stay.

Why would the Senate and House Democratic leadership -- and now the White House and most Senate Republicans -- want to keep these lawbreakers -- every one of whose households will cost Americans an average net of $22,000 a year?

Rector's study indicates that these total households headed by foreign-born high school drop-outs are costing taxpayers a net of around:

$100 BILLION a year

Yet, the new White House/Republican Senator immigration plan would ensure that all the illegal aliens getting that subsidy would remain to keep collecting ...

... and that we would add large numbers of new households every year so that the total subsidy could grow much higher.

This Heritage Foundation Study makes it devastatingly clear that our current immigration policies amount to

BIGGEST UNFUNDED MANDATE ON LOCAL AND STATE GOVERNMENTS

Now, President Bush and apparently the majority of Republican Senators want to radically increase immigration's costs for local and state governments (and their taxpayers)!

LOUSY RESULTS EMERGED FROM LOUSY PRINCIPLES

The White House sales pitch begins with a slide titled "FIRST PRINCIPLES."

It isn't so much what is stated but what is unstated that makes the principles so lousy.

Nothing about protecting the earning power of American workers and their ability to provide for their families.

Nothing about serving the national interest.

Nothing about protecting against taxpayer subsidies.

Nothing about keeping incentives for businesses to engage in productivity-enhancing innovation instead of relying on cheap labor.

Nothing about learning what the American people want and how immigration policies affect quality of life.

Nothing about protecting American students' ability to seek careers in high-skill occupations.

As Sen. Jeff Session (R-Ala.) told the American Legion earlier this month: Most immigration proposals are nothing more than a collection of special-interest requests that have nothing to do with the national interest.

BOTTOM LINE ANALYSIS:

This highly negotiated plan has more than a dozen pet projects of various Senators.

Many of those pet projects are actually good ideas. But they have been assembled without regard to their overall effect on the American people.

In the end, the only clear purpose of this plan is that it serve the desires of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce professional lobbying class.

The plan would radically increase immigration numbers and forced population growth, congestion, chaos and regimentation on American communities and their residents.

It would impose astronomical costs upon the taxpayers in order to subsidize the businesses that make use of the foreign labor.

There are hopeful signs that this plan has a number of ingredients necessary to prevent most future illegal immigration.

But even if the loopholes in the plan's enforcement provisions were closed, better enforcement against future illegal immigration doesn't come close to justifying the damage inflicted on Americans by the amnesty and the immigration increases in the plan.

If you look forward to being crowded with a HALF-BILLION U.S. residents and trillions of dollars of extra government costs, remain silent today.

Otherwise, make some phone calls.

- NumbersUSA

[almaty 19]

interesting read.....

[peejay 327]

interesting read.....

I think if people look at the facts instead of making snap judgements based on emotion, a lot of these proposals from the pro-amnesty people show how they are self serving and benefitial to the few at the expense of the many.

I often see a lot of liberals here on VJ whining about environmental issues, economic injustice, poverty, etc., etc., but they do not see the connection these issues have to uncontrolled massive immigration (legal and illegal). The taxpayer is still picking up the tab for immigration that really just benefits the immigrant and corporations. Whether these people are legal or illegal...the impact on the rest of America is still there.