Reid Says Amnesty Vote Pushed Off To Early Next Week

GOOD NEWS — No New YES Votes For DREAM Amnesty

BAD NEWS — Talk of hiding amnesty inside giant spending & tax bills

See below for our latest target list for today.

HERE’S THE UPDATE IN BRIEF FOR TODAY:
Massive pro-amnesty pressure this week has failed to get a single new YES vote. Congratulatons to all of you who have been phoning with practical and rational comments about the DREAM amnesty. Just as last week, we would beat that amnesty if the vote were held in the Senate today. But we can’t stop phoning because Senate leaders are trying to give pro-amnesty advocates every moment possible to find the last of the 60 votes they need.

No. 2 Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-Nev.) now is pushing the DREAM Act amnesty vote out of this week and he says likely early next week. Nonetheless, he continues to claim that the amnesty vote is a higher priority for the Senate leadership than all but three or four of the long wish list they have before Christmas.

Reid also indicates that if amnesty doesn’t pass before Christmas he may bring Senate back between Christmas and New Year’s. He also has suggested he might bring the old Senate back on Monday and Tuesday after New Year’s for the final two days before the Congress that was elected in November takes over. He knows that an amnesty has zero chance of passing in the newly elected Congress, so he seems intent on holding the old Congress around as long as he needs to get an amnesty to the President’s desk.

Danger of hiding amnesty inside larger bill during the Lame Duck? The ILW.com website for immigration lawyers carried some fascinating comments this week about the desperation among pro-amnesty advocates. In giving three reasons why the nation’s attorneys should support the DREAM amnesty was: “a not-insignificant fraction of DREAM beneficiaries will need legal counsel, one of the few bright spots on the horizon for law firms suffering from the Great Recession.” While noting that Reid still doesn’t have the votes to pass the DREAM amnesty on its own, “If DREAM passage is to be ensured, the sure-fire method is to attach it to a must-pass bill. Two such bills are currently in play and DREAM could conceivably be attached to either. The bills are of course, the tax cut bill and the Continuing Resolution for Appropriations for FY 2011. . . even serious discussion about attaching DREAM to the must-pass bills would go a long way to getting the 60 votes on the stand-alone bill.”

TOP PHONE TARGETS TODAY

UNDECLARED BUT LEANING YES

202-224-3121

ALASKA
Sen. Murkowski (R)
No statement on her web site and no media quotes. Daily Kos says multiple whips counts have her as a likely supporter. Most of the PRO-amnesty groups are counting her as a YES.

LOUISIANA
Sen. Landrieu (D)
She indicates that the House bill needs to be considered because it has some changes (suggesting that she will claim the House bill closes loopholes). She talks of major concern for the “children.”

MICHIGAN
Sen. Stabenow (D)
She was a certain YES on cloture to start debate. But she has not indicated whether she would vote YES to end debate and thus pass the bill. She is up for re-election in 2012 in a state that turned sharply Republican in the 2010 elections. Now (as noted above), we are facing only a cloture vote to END debate. PRO-amnesty forces count her as theirs. But I don’t think she has to be at all.

MISSOURI
Sen. McCaskill (D)
McCaskill has a wide-ranging interview on her web site. Appears to be leaning toward yes but its non-committal. She says (1) we have never punished children, (2) this is a different bill than the one I voted against, and (3) if this bill is more narrowly drawn, I will take a serious look at it. She needs to be reminded that any amnesty support will certainly show up when she tries to be re-elected in 2012 by a state that went sharply Republican in the 2010 elections.

NORTH DAKOTA
Sen. Dorgan (D)
He was a certain YES on cloture to start debate. But he has not indicated whether he would vote YES to end debate and thus pass the bill. Now (as noted above), we are facing only a cloture vote to END debate. In the past, he has been one of our most reliable NO votes on amnesty. But he is retiring and acting squishy. PRO-amnesty forces are counting him as theirs. I don’t think that has to be true at all.

LEANING NO BUT PROBABLY NEED MORE ENCOURAGEMENT

202-224-3121

These Senators’ staff continually tell our members that they will vote NO. But based on past performance, on current pressure from PRO-amnesty forces in their states, etc., our Hill Team believes they need lots more phone calls thanking them for their expected NO vote and reminding them why they are taking the ethically and practically correct position.

MAINE
Sen. Collins (R)
Sen. Snowe (R)

MONTANA
Sen. Baucus (D)

NORTH CAROLINA
Sen. Hagan (D)

NORTH DAKOTA
Sen. Conrad (D)

202-224-3121

Please make those calls. We can win this, like we have beaten every amnesty in every year since 2000.

KEY MESSAGES IN ALL PHONE CALLS TO SENATORS WHO ARE SYMPATHETIC TO THE DREAM ACT POSTER CHILDREN

Keep this in mind about Senators who are Undeclared, or who say they will vote NO but are squishy, or who say they will vote YES but are potentially movable to NO:

They all are sympathetic to the poster children of the DREAM Act — those are the minority of potential amnesty recipients who were brought to the U.S. by their parents when they were infants or toddlers and who are now good high school or college students.

You will gain nothing with the Senators we are trying to reach today by being negative about these students.

Instead, you have to approach these Senators on the basis of practicality. Perhaps the poster children do deserve consideration in the future but not before the enforcement is put in place to stop future illegal immigration. Your argument is that it is not possible in this rushed Lame Duck session to create and pass an amnesty that is limited to the deserving and which will stop future unfair illegal labor competition to unemployed Americans.

My thought is that it would be helpful today for every phone call to make the same pitches to Senators who are sympathetic to the poster children of the DREAM amnesty:
No matter how sympathetic these students may be, you can’t give out another mass amnesty without fixing the weak enforcement that allowed their parents to bring them here and keep them here for years and years. DREAM has ZERO enforcement.

The DREAM Act amnesty includes no requirement that jobs be shut off to the millions of future illegal aliens who will bring THEIR children and put them in this exact same predicament that DREAM puports to resolve. It is totally irresponsible to the 22 million unemployed Americans to give out a big amnesty without requiring mandatory verification to keep illegal aliens from holding jobs.

This is the line in the sand you are asking every Senator to draw . . .

. . . . . The line is that whatever one’s feelings about the merits of some illegal aliens for an amnesty, no amnesty should be even talked about until the border is secure against continued mass illegal immigration and our jobs are secure from illegal aliens being able to take them from Americans.

THANKS SO MUCH FOR PICKING UP THAT PHONE ONCE AGAIN,
ROY BECK