=================================================
FROM: Roy Beck, Executive Director, NumbersUSA.com
DATE: 4:00 p.m., Tuesday, 18DEC01
TOPIC: PHONE NOW: White House gutting tracking bill
=================================================
Read Update, added 12/19/01 4:10
PM Pacific
This is an emergency alert. The White House is close to gutting all efforts to improve security in our visa system.
Congress has to pass final spending bills this week. It already is 75 days late in meeting the deadline and has to adjourn before Christmas. All kinds of really bad things could happen beginning tomorrow through Saturday. Every ounce of help you can give is of the utmost importance right now.
===================
ACTIONS REQUESTED
===================
* Send new faxes on http://www.NumbersUSA.com.
(See description below).
* The country needs your phone calls into congressional and White
House offices immediately. (See details below).
* Send this e-mail through every e-mail network you know -- IMMEDIATELY
==============
THE SITUATION
==============
White House staffers are strong-arming Republican congressional leaders and demanding that they gut the visa-tracking bill of Kennedy-Brownback-Feinstein-Kyl. Although not perfect, this compromise bill would do perhaps 80% of what is needed with our visa system to start providing some security to the American people and make it far more difficult to overstay visas and stay as illegal aliens.
The White House is demanding these changes:
* Remove requirements for "smart visas" with biometric identifiers embedded to ensure that aliens are who they say they are.
* Remove requirements that passports from visa waiver countries
have
biometric identifiers. Without that, terrorists from all over
the world can come through countries like England and Germany
and never be truly checked.
* Allow the president to waive all deadlines in the bill. This is especially aimed at keeping from having to institute the entry-exit system at the borders that was created in the 1996 law. Then-Sen. Abraham of Michigan spent four years as Senate Immigration Chair preventing the entry-exit system from being implemented. The Bush administration has apparently made the Abraham immigration ideology its own. The entry exit system would have computers noting every person who arrives with a visa and every time one of those persons leaves the country. This is the foundation of any tracking of foreign nationals in this country.
* Add perhaps another year of Section 245(i) to allow illegal aliens to stay here illegally until their name comes up on immigration waiting lists.
The net result of the Bush requests would be to provide no new security to this country and increase the danger by rewarding hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens with permanent residency without a decent security check.
==================
SEND FAXES
==================
Log on to http://www.NumbersUSA.com and click on FAX CONGRESS FREE to send the following faxes:
* Fax number 1217 to President Bush expressing outrage that he and his staff are trying to gut this important legislation. Tell President Bush his actions are outrageous after what happened Sep. 11. We need clear tracking of every foreign national into this country, and we need to be clear about when and whether they leave.
* Fax number 1217a to Members of the House and Senate Leadership asking them to resist efforts to weaken the alien tracking and identification legislation.
* Fax number 1215a to cosponsors of S. 1749, the alien tracking and identification legislation. Tell the cosponsors what the White House is up to and ask them to resist all efforts to gut this bill.
This is the time to really fill these faxes with your own personal feelings about what is happening.
Also, remember that you can go back to the same fax every day and send a different version as long as Congress is in session.
==================
MAKE PHONE CALLS
==================
This is the most powerful thing you can do. You will find all phone numbers at this link:
http://www.numbersusa.com/congressinfo/
1. Call your two Senators and one Representative. Warn them about the White House efforts described above. Tell them about the importance of the tracking efforts to close security loopholes. Also talk to them about how Section 245(i) CREATES loopholes.
If you want to bone up on additional information about these measures, look at these pages:
Integrated Alien Tracking and Identification System
http://www.numbersusa.com/text?ID=779
How visas perpetrate terror
http://www.numbersusa.com/hottopic/index.html
Sham marriages (often a result of 245i) lead to terrorism http://www.numbersusa.com/text?ID=789
2. Ask your Members of Congress to notify their party leaders that they support the Feinstein-Kyl tracking system and don't want it weakened in any way. Also that they oppose including the Section 245(i)security loophole and amnesty with any tracking bill.
3. Call with the same message to the congressional leadership offices.
HOUSE:
Rep. Dick Armey R-TX, (202) 225-7772
Rep. David Bonior D-MI, (202) 225-2106
Rep. Tom DeLay R-TX, (202) 225-5951
Rep. Dick Gephardt D-MO, (202) 225-2671
Rep. Dennis Hastert R-IL, (202) 225-2976
Rep. James Sensenbrenner R-WI, (202) 225-5101
SENATE:
Sen. Tom Daschle D-SD, (202) 224-2939
Sen. Edward Kennedy D-MA, (202) 224-4543
Sen. Trent Lott R-MS, (202) 224-6253
Sen. Don Nickles R-OK, (202) 224-5754
Sen. Harry Reid D-NV, (202) 224-3542
4. Call the White House and express your outrage at what they are doing. While asking our military personnel to risk their lives in other countries, the White House refuses to make our borders and visa system more secure to protect American lives.
White House phone number: (202) 456-1414
5. Bonus points: Call the district office numbers of your Members of Congress. You will find them at:
http://www.numbersusa.com/congressinfo/
Enough calls in the local offices will prompt staff there to call the heads of the Washington office. This will create a very important impression that the public is finding out about the callous disregard for American life that is occuring in the current political horsetrading.
You may want to print out some of our fax texts to give you some of the language you will use on the call.
Please keep calling all week until you hear from us. We can,t afford to let up right now.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR URGENT ACTION DURING THIS MOST CRITICAL TIME.
ROY