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| Use this for your final phone calls to stop DREAM Act amnesty this morning | ||||
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PHONE SENATE SWITCHBOARD AT: 202-224-3121 THIS IS A SHOW-DOWN MORNING, FRIENDS. The vote on amnesty may be before noon. I have a simple paragraph you can use on the phone if you have never called a Senate office. It is so easy. "Hi, my name is xmxmxm xmxmxmx. I am calling about S. 2205, the DREAM Act amnesty. I urge the Senator to vote NO on cloture today and kill this amnesty. Thank you." It is going to take a lot of first-timers to pull out a victory when the Senate is expected to vote by mid-day. How about calling and saying something like: "I would like for you to tell Senator xmxmxmxm that giving the DREAM Act amnesty to 2.1 million illegal aliens will send the wrong message to the rest of the world. Ask him to please vote NO on cloture on S. 2205. We don't need to entice a larger wave of illegal immigration." Or this: "There should be no amnesty of any kind until Congress passes laws to stop the hiring of illegal foreign workers. S. 2205 would just invite a lot more illegal aliens to come. Please ask Sen. xmxmxm to vote NO on the DREAM Act amnesty."
CAN YOU MOVE A VOTE AND STOP THE AMNESTY THIS MORNING?
Assistant Senate Majority Leader Durbin (D-Ill.) said he would be working tonight to find the final YES votes to have the 60 needed to pass his DREAM Act amnesty later this morning. I don't know what he found. But even if he did go to bed with 60 votes, you can knock him back to 59 (or lower) and stop this amnesty if collectively you swamp the Senate offices with phone calls between 7 a.m. EDT and the vote which could come as early as 11 a.m. PHONE SENATE SWITCHBOARD AT: 202-224-3121
THE MOST IMPORTANT SENATORS TO CALL
Your influence is always strongest with your own two Senators. You can see which way your Senators are leaning by checking our list on the www.NumbersUSA.com. Your phone calls are most important for the Senators printed in black because they have not indicated which way they are likely to vote. But if you want to lend more help this morning, please call from one of the lists below. TARGET THESE DEMOCRATIC SENATORS UP FOR RE-ELECTION NEXT YEAR Our success tomorrow probably depends on your ability to convince at least seven Democrats to vote NO on cloture on S. 2205 (the DREAM Act Amnesty). Our "whipping" of vote counts tells us that we are perhaps as strong as we've ever been at this point among Republican Senators. But there are at least 20 Republicans who are pledged to vote YES or on the fence. I believe that several of these Republicans will be far more likely to vote NO if they see several Democrats voting NO, too. It may be a situation where the Democrats bring a kind of 1-for-1 match in which each Democrat who votes NO will cause one Republican to vote NO. Here are the Democrats who are up for re-election next year: Baucus (D-MT) Biden (D-DE) Durbin (D-IL) Harkin (D-IA) Johnson (D-SD) Kerry (D-MA) Landrieu (D-LA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Levin (D-MI) Pryor (D-AR) Reed (D-RI) Rockefeller (D-WV) PHONE SENATE SWITCHBOARD AT: 202-224-3121 If you have trouble getting through, you can get the direct phone numbers to their Capitol offices and to their home state offices at: numbersusa.com/congressinfo/ HELP THE ANTI-AMNESTY DEMOCRATS OF LAST JUNE STICK WITH THEIR PRINCIPLES IN OCTOBER Here are the Democrats who broke with Party leaders and voted against the amnesty last spring. They are under tremendous pressure from the Party to show some loyalty by voting for what the Party says is just a "little" amnesty. You need to help remind them why they voted NO in June and why their NO on this amnesty is just as important. Baucus (D-MT) Bayh (D-IN) Bingaman (D-NM) Brown (D-OH) Byrd (D-WV) Dorgan (D-ND) Harkin (D-IA) Landrieu (D-LA) McCaskill (D-MO) Nelson (D-NE) Pryor (D-AR) Rockefeller (D-WV) Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Webb (D-VA) PHONE SENATE SWITCHBOARD AT: 202-224-3121 Our Capitol Hill Team is hearing from fence-sitting Senators that the argument that is moving them most toward voting YES on the DREAM Act amnesty is that it would give an amnesty to "only 60,000 kids a year." These fence-sitters are listed in black on our Home page at www.NumbersUSA.com. (We are updating that list by the hour to show you who is pledging to vote NO and YES.) Point No. 1 about the numbers All of you who have access to a phone and a modicum of privacy right now need to call the "Senators in black" and tell their offices that the NUMBERS involved in DREAM are far larger than the claim of just 60,000 a year. PHONE SENATE SWITCHBOARD AT: 202-224-3121 Dr. Steve Camarota at the Center for Immigration Studies this afternoon issued estimates on how many illegal aliens potentially could be involved if the DREAM Act amnesty becomes law. His research was based on the latest government surveys. DREAM Act Offers Amnesty to 2.1 Million New Estimate Shows Another 1.4 Million Family Members Could Also Stay WASHINGTON (October 23, 2007) — The Senate is currently considering the DREAM Act (S.2205). Some have argued that only 60,000 illegal immigrants would be granted amnesty annually under the Act, but a new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of 2007 Census Bureau data shows millions of potential beneficiaries.
Think of it this way: Congress passes DREAM and in essence gives a CAN'T DEPORT ME card to the 2.1 million illegals. Do you think the feds will then deport their illegal parents and leave the amnestied teenagers without adult supervision? And if the feds decide to keep their hands off the parents and give a full amnesty to the 2.1 million, do you believe the feds will then deport the other nearly 1 million siblings who didn't qualify for the amnesty? You know how this would play out. DREAM would give an amnesty to a bunch of illegal kids and a de facto amnesty to their whole nuclear families. Did somebody say "backdoor blanket amnesty?" When you are talking to fence-straddling offices, you have to make sure the staffers are understanding that DREAM means a whole lot of amnesty goin' on. Point No. 2 about the prevention of future illegal immigration One point that many of the fence-straddling Senators seem to care about is how this DREAM amnesty would affect future illegal immigration. We already established above that it would reward huge numbers of illegal aliens with citizenship or de facto amnesty. That would be a tremendous incentive for future illegal immigration if foreign nationals don't believe we have our enforcement house in order. Instead of passing legislation to improve the lack of enforcement in this country that allowed at least 12 million illegal aliens to settle here, Senators are trying to just continue the 21-year pattern of giving rewards to illegal aliens. When we defeated the enforcement/amnesty bill last spring, the majority voice around the country was that we wanted ENFORCEMENT ONLY. Instead, Senators Reid, Durbin, Hagel and Lugar are trying to force us to swallow AMNESTY ONLY. Your phone calls have to break through with Senate staffs that no amnesty of any kind is acceptable while the country is in a state of lawlessness. PHONE SENATE SWITCHBOARD AT: 202-224-3121 If none of these Senators is in your state, why don't you pick one of the Senators on these lists who is from a state near you, particularly if it is a smaller-population state. The Washington Post had a story today quoting Democratic strategists as saying that Democrats who don't take seriously Americans' disgust with illegal immigration are in for some rude awakenings during next year's elections. Especially if you are a Democrat or and Independent, you may want to try to convey this in your phone call. GOP Finds Hot Button in Illegal Immigration Special Election in Massachusetts Could Be Indicative of Democratic Weak Spot By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, October 23, 2007; A07 When Republican Jim Ogonowski launched his long-shot bid for Congress, he prepared for an upbeat campaign in his Democratic, working-class district of Massachusetts, based on a winning r¿sum¿: affable hay farmer, former Air Force lieutenant colonel, and brother of an American Airlines pilot whose hijacked plane slammed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. But by last month, although opinion polling showed that he was well liked, he was still running 10 points behind Democrat Niki Tsongas with just weeks to go before a special election. The campaign needed a way to go beyond biography, to persuade Northern Massachusetts to vote Republican. They found it in illegal immigration. On Tuesday, Ogonowski still fell short, but Tsongas's 51 to 45 percent victory was a shocker in a district where both John F. Kerry and Al Gore took 57 percent of the vote, and where liberal Democratic Rep. Martin T. Meehan served comfortably for eight terms. The underwhelming victory of the wife of deceased former senator Paul Tsongas has rekindled Democratic concerns about an immigration issue they had hoped had been put to rest. "This issue has real implications for the country. It captures all the American people's anger and frustration not only with immigration, but with the economy," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and an architect of the Democratic congressional victories of 2006. "It's self-evident. This is a big problem." Republicans, sensing a major vulnerability, have been hammering Democrats, forcing Congress to face the question of illegal immigration on every bill they can find, from agriculture spending and housing assistance to the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). House Democrats are so concerned that they have resumed talks on a new legislative push, even though the collapse of an immigration deal in the Senate this spring has left virtually no chance that a final bill can be passed in this Congress. But even in the early stages of this renewed effort, negotiations have only underscored the party's problems. Some Democratic leaders want what they call a "mini bill," emphasizing border control, penalties on firms that employ illegal immigrants and stronger efforts to deny illegal immigrants government benefits. But Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.), the point man on the bill, said he will never accept a measure that does not include a pathway to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented workers in the country. "I think the Democrats are on the wrong side of this issue, and if they continue down this path, they are going to lose a lot of seats," said Matt Wylie, a strategist for the Ogonowski campaign. The issue has shifted since concerns about illegal immigrants triggered angry calls for border fences and deportation two years ago. Now, voter anger appears to revolve around the belief that illegal immigrants are unfairly consuming government benefits, a fear that stems more from economic uncertainty than culture clashes, Democratic and Republican pollsters say. Those concerns are not everywhere. But they are glaring in some of the white, working-class districts in Kansas, Indiana, North Carolina and New Hampshire that gave the Democrats control of the House last year. And they were on clear display in Lowell, Mass. "Immigration played into the economic issue," said Francis Talty, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell who followed the Tsongas-Ogonowski contest. "Do you want illegal immigrants to get in-state A new national poll for National Public Radio, conducted by the Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, and the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies, found that voters are more likely to side with Democrats than Republicans on war, taxes and spending, the economy, health care and health insurance for children, often by wide margins. On immigration, the Republicans hold a 49 to 44 percent lead. But even that might be deceptively tight, said Glen Bolger, a partner with Public Opinion Strategies. In the poll, the GOP position was framed as getting control of the border, requiring illegal immigrants to reenter the country legally, stopping illegal immigrants from getting government benefits and sending illegal immigrants who are criminals packing. The Democratic position was, "It is impractical to expel 12 million people, but we need tougher controls at the borders, tougher penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants and we should bar illegal immigrants from getting most government benefits, while allowing the law-abiding immigrants to get on a long path to citizenship." That Democratic message is much tougher than the one most voters are hearing, Bolger argued. "They're actually in worse shape than they think they are," he said. Dustin Olson, Ogonowski's campaign manager, said the candidate did not intend to make government benefits for illegal immigrants a centerpiece of the campaign, but it came up unbidden, again and again. Internal polling found that Ogonowski's tough stance was winning 60 percent to 30 percent over the positions articulated by Tsongas, said Rob Autry, another Public Opinion Strategies partner who served as Ogonowski's pollster. Ogonowski's position on taxes had a narrower, 13 percentage point lead. Every other issue "was dicey," he said. Then, just two days before Tuesday's balloting, Tsongas said illegal immigrants should each be allowed to get a driver's license. The final radio ad of the Ogonowski insurgency intoned, "And now for something truly incredible. You already know Niki Tsongas supports amnesty for illegal immigrants, but today we learned Niki Tsongas would go even further. Tsongas told the Boston Herald she wants to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants." John Walsh, chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, said the final vote proved the limits of the immigration message. The district may be less Democratic than the presidential numbers make it appear, he cautioned. Republican gubernatorial candidates have carried it handily since 1990, until Deval L. Patrick, the current Democratic governor, won it with 51 percent of the vote, the same percentage Tsongas took. If Ogonowski's internal polling showed him trailing by 10 points in September, his immigration blitz made up only five points, he said. But in districts where Democrats do not have five points to give, those numbers loom large. "For the American people, and therefore all of us, it's emerged as the third rail of American politics," Emanuel said. "And anyone who doesn't realize that isn't with the American people." THANKS. WE CAN'T LET UP IN PHONING THIS AFTERNOON. EARLIER TODAY, SOME OFFICES WERE SAYING PHONE CALLS WERE RUNNING EVEN. WE USUALLY BEAT THE OTHER SIDE 25-1 AND EVEN 100-1.  P.S. Yes, many of these illegal teenagers have compelling stories. And those stories may warrant some special consideration at some time. But only after Congress passes the laws necessary to keep the next million illegal teens from arriving, and only after the Administration shows that it can implement those laws. Tell Senate offices "No more talk of rewards for illegal immigration until enforcement laws are passed." . YOU STILL HAVE A COUPLE OF HOURS TO PHONE A LOT OF THESE OFFICES AND TRY TO STOP THIS AMNESTY, P.S. WELCOME TO OUR 500,000th ON-LINE ACTIVIST FAXER! Earlier this afternoon, you joined a half-million-strong citizen army. When George Bush announced his first amnesty (which we helped defeat) in January of 2004, we had 12,000 activist members. A year ago, we were up to a little over 200,000. We are well on our way on our MARCH TO A MILLION ACTIVISTS. As for the more than 2,000 of you who just joined NumbersUSA today, no time for celebration -- we have another amnesty to stop. |