10/4/04 - PHONE now to stop White House from stripping good immigration safeguards from House 9/11 bill

From: Roy Beck, President, NumbersUSA
Date: Monday 4oct04 9 a.m.

PHONE now to stop White House from stripping good immigration safeguards from House 9/11 bill

Good morning and top of the week,

We've got a lot of work to do immediately to try to save the most important legislation against illegal immigration in perhaps 10 years.

Most importantly this morning and throughout the day is for you to make some quick, simple phone calls.

Your tens of thousands of faxes in response to my urgent request Saturday are startling Administration and congressional officials as they are beginning to arrive at their offices this morning. Aides are carrying in large stacks of faxes from the fax machine and re-loading them with paper which is causing the machines to immediately start spewing out more faxes in the case of many offices, especially Administration offices, the faxes are printing nearly one a minute.

(My apologies to those of you who found it difficult to use our system over the weekend. The activity of the NumbersUSA networkers was the highest in our history. That's good. But our programmers had to make some quick changes in our equipment to rise to the occasion. Hope you find it easier today. We'll continue to update our systems to meet the growing citizen demand.)

The point of this exercise is to focus as many Washington officials as possible on the secret attempts over the weekend by the Bush Administration to strong-arm House GOP leaders into removing immigration safeguards from their proposed 9/11 security bill. It is to also expose the Senate 9/11 bill (supported by the Bush Administration and by Democratic leaders) as a farce designed to hoodwink the public into thinking something is being done for security while totally ignoring the country,s lack of control over the tens of millions of aliens entering the country each year.

These officials are shocked that faxes have been arriving about this since Saturday.

Most of them are just now learning about the White House efforts from this morning,s Washington Times. After closely tracking these developments on Capitol Hill all weekend, the NumbersUSA Capitol Hill Team broke the story in the Times.

You can read that story at the bottom of this Action Alert.

1. ACTION --- Phone White House

We could not ask you to make phone calls over the weekend because the White House Comment Line was closed down. But it is open for business now.

Believe me, the volunteers who staff the phones there send word up the line to Karl Rove pretty quickly when they get an avalanche of calls on the same subject. We have also found over time that most volunteers at the White House tend to be sympathetic to our concerns.

The White House number to call is: 202-456-1111

It is only open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EDT. So, please get your calls in immediately. If you get a busy signal that means your fellow NumbersUSA Networkers are doing a good job, but please try a few times to get through.

2. ACTION --- Script for your call to Administration

Please feel free to make any comments you choose. But here is a model of a really quick message. Remember, the most important thing is to get your request recorded accurately.

Hello, I'm calling about the 9/11 legislation.

I am upset at reports that the White House is trying to gut the bill of immigration safeguards.

I support the House Leadership Bill. H.R. 10.

I am urging the White House to support H.R. 10 which includes the drivers license and other immigration safeguards that the 9/11 commission requested.

You may decide instead to emphasize some other item as you pull it from the Washington Times article below or from our Action Alerts to you. Feel free to mention the Times article.

3. ACTION --- Phone your U.S. Representative

You can get the phone number and name of your U.S. Representative by simply going on your home page of www.NumbersUSA.com. Near the top of the middle of the page is always a link for Your Members of Congress.

You can also click from right here:

www.NumbersUSA.com/myMembers [http://www.NumbersUSA.com/myMembers]

You will see phone numbers both for a D.C. office and also for offices in your home area. Please call and leave your message first at the D.C. office. But if you have time, it would add a lot of impact if you also called the home offices.

Here,s a sample script you can modify when calling your Member:

Hello, I'm calling about the 9/11 legislation, H.R. 10.

I am upset at reports that the White House is trying to gut the bill of immigration safeguards in the House bill.

I support the House Leadership Bill H.R. 10.

I am urging Rep. (your Representative,s name) to let it be known that he/she wants to keep the driver's license and other immigration safeguards that the 9/11 commission requested and which are in H.R. 10.

4. ACTION --- Make sure you have sent all of your faxes

If you haven,t had a chance yet to respond to my Saturday request to send faxes, please do so now.

You can always see all faxes available for you to send by going to:

www.NumbersUSA.com/fax [http://www.NumbersUSA.com/fax]

5. BACKGROUNDWhat's happening

The bottom line is that the White House apparently does not want provisions that would make it significantly more difficult for illegal workers to enter and remain in the U.S.

We can only speculate why the White House would do this. But our best guess is that corporate campaign contributors have pressured the White House to not do anything that would reduce their supply of cheap illegal foreign workers.

The White House prefers the 9/11 legislation that is moving through the Senate. That bill contains no efforts to improve our immigration system. It was written by Sen. Lieberman (D-CT) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

Although the 9/11 tragedy was perpetrated by aliens who exploited an insecure immigration system, Lieberman and McCain (and apparently Pres. Bush) believe legislation responding to the tragedy should NOT do anything about our insecure immigration system.

As you can see from the Times story below, 9/11 families feel the Senate version would be a desecration of the memory of their loved ones who died at the hands of a too-lax immigration system.

Fortunately, House GOP leaders Hastert (IL), DeLay (TX), Blunt (MO) and Pryce (OH) agree with the American people that allowing millions of illegal aliens a free ride and leaving our borders largely open to new illegal entries is an affront to the memory of the victims of 9/11 and a danger to all Americans in the future.

They shepherded strong 9/11 legislation through House committees last week and intend to bring it to the floor this week -- if the White House doesn't change their minds.

As early as Monday night, the GOP House leaders will meet with all House Republicans and give them a chance to indicate their preference between fighting illegal immigration and the White House's current preference to coddle illegal aliens.

If each of those House Republicans will have heard from scores of constituents asking them to retain the immigration provisions, we can hope that GOP House leaders will get a resounding message to stand firm in their initial inclination to fight illegal immigration.

(Retaining those provisions for the House vote will be just one major step. Next, the House leaders operating in the joint Conference Committee with Senate leaders will have to prevail. But we'll deal with that challenge when we get there.)

The current 9/11 bill in the House has many great improvements on immigration. But the most important provisions at stake from the White House onslaught deal with making identification secure in this country, particularly in keeping drivers licenses out of the hands of illegal aliens.

The House provisions would stop here and now the ridiculous efforts in some states to give illegal aliens drivers licenses to help them break the law more easily.

NumbersUSA has worked closely with families of 9/11 victims this week and have helped them to express their preference for immigration provisions to high-level leaders.

Please don't let these 9/11 families down by failing to act now.

6. BACKGROUND ARTICLE..Washington Times breaks White House subversion this morning

House told to alter intelligence bill

By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The White House has told House Republicans that it wants them to remove provisions in their intelligence-overhaul bill that would crack down on illegal aliens' obtaining drivers' licenses, allow easier deportation and limit the use of foreign consular ID cards.

The Senate's bill lacks those provisions, and as the two chambers race toward trying to pass a bill before the Nov. 2 election, the measures are a potential stumbling block.

The White House wants those provisions out, according to a congressional source familiar with the bill.

"They have expressed desire to kill some of the immigration provisions and gut some of others," the source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Rosemary Jenks, a lobbyist for stricter immigration controls for the group NumbersUSA , who has been tracking the bill, said White House policy officials met with Republican staffers to urge them to remove the provisions, even though White House officials initially had signed off on those same provisions before the bill was introduced officially.

"The White House was involved in the negotiations before the bill was introduced, and now, for some reason, it has come back and decided to insist that the main provisions, the most effective provisions of the bill, be gutted," she said.

She said House Republican leaders appear to be standing firm in refusing the White House demands. A White House spokesman did not return a call for comment yesterday.

Peter Gadiel, spokesman for 9/11 Families for a Secure America, said his organization will drop its endorsement of the bill if the immigration provisions are removed.

"This goes to the very heart of the entire conspiracy of 9/11," he said. "These people entered the country, got driver's licenses, used those driver's licenses to obtain the services they needed, and then used those driver's licenses to get on the plane."

The House bill restricts federal employees' acceptance of consular identification cards issued by other nations, which the Government Accountability Office said last week helps illegal aliens evade immigration law.

The bill also would set standards for driver's licenses that would make it much more difficult for illegal aliens to obtain them and for temporary visitors to keep licenses past their visa expiration.

The legislation also would expedite deportation of immigrants who have entered the United States illegally in the past five years and curtail court reviews of deportation proceedings even when the person faces torture when returned home.

Angela Kelley, deputy director of the National Immigration Forum, said adding those amendments is an attempt to sink the entire bill.

"The piling on of unrelated legislative pet projects, especially by the Republican Party's anti-immigration wing, could throw the carefully reasoned, bipartisan recommendations of the 9/11 commission to the curb," she said.

Members of the National Commission for Terrorist attacks upon the United States held a press conference last week to complain about some of the House provisions and praise the Senate bill as it now stands. Commission Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton singled out some of the House immigration provisions as particularly problematic for commission members.

The White House also has issued a statement praising the Senate bill.

But Mr. Gadiel said removing the immigration provision would be breaking Congress' promise to pass all of the September 11 commission's recommendations.

He said senators should be warned: "If you really have the nerve to kill a final bill " ignore all the recommendations of the 9/11 commission and spit in the faces of the 9/11 families because the final bill all of the recommendations, not just the ones you find palatable, go ahead, kill the bill. See what the American people feel in November."

-- ROY