On the lookout for amnesty: responding to pleas from constituents, House members are resisting the push for amnesty and open borders and are trying to pass legislation to protect Americans.

Take heart America. Contrary to the repeated claims of the political and business elites, it is possible to regain control over our dissolving borders. And, just as important, it also is possible to summon the political will to do so--as recent events in our nation's capital have shown.

Completely unnoticed by many Americans--because it went largely unreported--were some important Christmas presents delivered by the House of Representatives in the closing hours of the 2005 congressional session. Thanks to the unyielding persistence of Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) and two dozen members of his House Immigration Reform Caucus, aided by a growing public outcry, the House took long-overdue action to address our escalating immigration crisis. Here are the big-ticket presents that made it through the House in hard-fought battles during the final hours before the Christmas break: adoption of important new border security and immigration enforcement legislation; defeat of dangerous amnesty/guest worker proposals; and stripping from the year-end omnibus spending bill an outrageous Senate provision to vastly increase the number of H-1B visas for foreign professionals and IT workers.

All of these House actions were major victories for middle America and major defeats for the combined big government/ big business/big media/big labor forces that comprise the imposing "open borders" lobby.

With the Bush White House, Microsoft's Bill Gates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and other business groups pushing hard to further loosen immigration controls and expand the importation of foreign workers, many analysts predicted that serious efforts aimed at true immigration reform were doomed. However, on December 16, by a vote of 239-182, the House passed H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005. Sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the bill contains a number of important features that have alarmed and infuriated the open border proponents in both the Democrat and Republican Parties. Those features include:

* Authorizing construction of 700 miles of border fence along the most active U.S.-Mexico border areas for illegal alien traffic.

* Withholding federal funds from state and local governments that have enacted policies prohibiting law enforcement officers from asking people about their immigration status, or otherwise hindering them from assisting in apprehending illegal immigrants.

* Eliminating a program known as the visa diversity lottery, which awards immigration visas to 50,000 people per year who are randomly chosen from countries considered to be underrepresented in the United States.

* Increasing penalties for document fraud and violent crimes by illegal aliens.

* Creating an instant electronic verification program that enables employers to easily check online to see whether an employee's or job applicant's name and Social Security number match.

The legislation is still deficient in several key enforcement areas, but it is remarkable that it made it through the gauntlet with as many essential provisions as it did--and without the single element most tenaciously sought by the Bush White House: a "guest worker" amnesty provision.

What They're Up Against

Virtually since his first day in the Oval Office, President George W. Bush has pushed relentlessly for increasing legal immigration to the U.S. and has resisted all serious efforts to enforce our existing immigration laws. However, realizing that there is widespread public opposition to rewarding the estimated 11 to 20 million aliens residing illegally in our country, the president announced that he also opposed amnesty. Instead, he proposed a program of "regularization," which was simply amnesty under a different label. But he didn't stop with an amnesty for the millions already here; he went much further, brazenly proposing a "guest worker" program that would match any "willing employer" in the U.S. with any foreign "willing worker."

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks dealt a temporary blow to the plans for more open borders. As a result of the attack, President Bush and his immigration lobby allies in Congress had to profess their commitment to homeland security (including tightening our borders) as a top priority and soft-pedal immigration increases. But in 2004 and 2005, the open borders lobby began stepping up its amnesty-guest worker agenda. In the months leading up to the 2005 Christmas recess, the White House's political advisers obviously sensed that the GOP's conservative base was dangerously close to going into open revolt over the administration's radical immigration policies. As a result, in his speeches, President Bush began coupling his guest worker proposal with pledges for stepped-up immigration enforcement at the border, in the interior of the country, and at the work site.

But the performances didn't fool many. Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, blasted President Bush's duplicity following his November 28 guest worker promotional tour through Arizona and New Mexico. "The president's plan is nothing more than a massive illegal alien amnesty on a six-year time delay, while his temporary worker program, which will be anything but temporary, is the death knell for America's middle class," Mr. Stein charged. Stein cited administration policies showing that the U.S. Department of Labor "is actively working with the Mexican government to protect illegal alien workers in this country," noting that "the bottom line is that Mr. Bush is touting a plan that will be full of rewards for illegal aliens and employers, and full of empty promises for the American public."

Team Bush and the House Republican leadership intended to do some "horse trading" in the final month of the session: promises of future enforcement in exchange for regularization and guest worker provisions now. But the House Immigration Reform Caucus stalwarts had been through that bait-and-switch charade before; they wouldn't budge. They demanded a clean bill of enforcement provisions without any amnesties or immigration increases. In the Judiciary Committee, the president's guest worker program was put forward by radical Democrat Howard Berman of California. After it was killed by a committee vote of 29 to 13, the White House and GOP leadership agreed to drop the guest worker efforts in the House. Yet a two-day slugfest ensued as the Tancredo-Sensenbrenner forces still had to fight for amendments that would put additional enforcement features into the bill, and against amendments aimed at weakening the bill.

Just a Beginning

One of the principal measures that the Immigration Reform Caucus failed to get into H.R. 4437 was an amendment that would end "birthright" citizenship, or the principle that every child born on U.S. soil is an American citizen. Each year an estimated 350,000 children of illegal immigrants--so-called "anchor babies"--are born in the U.S., enabling hundreds of thousands of whole families to stay in, or immigrate to, the United States.

But as one of its final acts before leaving for the Christmas holiday, the House was able to force the removal of an outrageous Senate scheme to increase legal immigration drastically through "temporary worker" visas that had been slipped into S. 1932, the badly misnamed Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. Without any hearings or debate, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) inserted language into the spending package that would have raised the annual quota of H1B visas for professional workers from 65,000 to 95,000. The Specter amendment also added another 90,000 employment-based visas annually and exempted family members of H-1B visa holders from annual caps. In one tell swoop, the number of "temporary" work visas would have been increased by 350,000 or more per year!

Incredibly, the Specter stealth amendment was easily inserted into S. 1932, with the only notable opposition in the Senate coming from Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.). With the Bush administration and business organizations, especially the hi-tech industry, pushing for unlimited worker visas, the Specter gambit was considered a "done deal" that the House had no chance of undoing. But the political experts were proven wrong once again.

Rep. Tom Tancredo, who has carried on what was for many years a long and lonely fight for sane immigration policies, was understandably buoyant over the year-end outcome. "For the first time in seven-and-a-half years, I'm going to be able to go out on the stump and talk about my party doing the right thing on immigration," Tancredo told Congressional Quarterly after the bruising battle. "And I feel good about it."

In a December 16 press release issued by his office, Rep. Tancredo said:

   Today, the House of Representatives
   passed a bill which strengthens our
   border security and begins to enforce
   immigration laws throughout
   the country. Over the last two days,
   reformers in the House have accomplished
   much: we have approved a
   security fence along our southern
   border, we have taken steps to end
   "catch and release" nationwide, and
   we have slashed funds to localities
   that shield illegal aliens.

      Some said that we couldn't do
   it, that businesses are too addicted
   to illegal labor, that the problem is
   too complex for Congress to tackle.
   When it became clear that the American
   people's demand for reform was
   too loud to ignore, our political toes
   changed their arguments and hid their
   intentions behind new language. Suddenly,
   amnesty was a "path to citizenship,"
   an "earned legalization," or
   "comprehensive reform." We passed
   comprehensive reform today: we penalized
   illegal alien employers and
   secured our borders.

But the bipartisan claque in Washington dedicated to breaking down the borders completely let it be known that they were far from giving up on the matter. "Before he praises this legislation too much, he should make sure there's a strategy to turn it into law," Congressional Quarterly reported Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) as saying, in reference to Tancredo. Likewise, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) told reporters that he would bet $100 that the House immigration bill never goes to a conference committee with the Senate. "After we pass this, we send it off to the Senate, and that's the end of it," Kolbe said. And Mr. Kolbe can be counted on to do "whatever it takes" to see that that happens.

It should be remembered that in the crucial House showdown over the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) last July, it was Rep. Kolbe, serving as one of the White House's primary enforcers, who publicly vowed to "twist some Republican arms until they break in a thousand pieces."

Rep. Tancredo is not unmindful of the battles and potential pitfalls ahead. "I am well aware that this is a three-round fight, and while this has been a good round, we haven't delivered the knockout punch," he says. "The open borders lobby and its cronies in the Senate will undoubtedly attempt to attach an amnesty to our reform bill. The American people know what the Senate's plan is, and they will bring political punishment to any official that favors it. No backdoor amnesty--no matter what you call it--will become law. Americans demand real reform now and, thankfully, they may get it."

However, as the aforementioned CAFTA vote and other close-fought battles have demonstrated, positions favored by the overwhelming majority of Americans can be--and often are--defeated by the well-organized and heavily funded special interests. The guest worker program is being advanced in two variations:

* S.1033, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Republican John McCain (Ariz.) and Democrat Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), would reward illegal aliens by allowing them to remain in the U.S. while applying for new work visas and extend to them the possibility of earning permanent legal status; and

* S.1438 sponsored by Republican Senators John Cornyn (Texas) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.) would require illegal immigrants to return to their home countries before applying for a new temporary guest worker visa.

Past Betrayals

"You can call these proposals 'guest worker,' 'regularization,' 'legalization,' 'amnesty' or whatever else you want to call them, but they all come down to the same thing, rewarding people who have broken our laws," says William King, former Chief of Border Patrol for the El Centro sector and one of our nation's leading authorities on immigration. "What we know for sure is that all of these amnesty programs provide a huge incentive for even more illegal aliens to rush across our border," Mr. King told THE NEW AMERICAN. "We saw that to be the case with the IRCA amnesty [Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986] and we saw it again as soon as President George W. Bush mentioned legalization in 2004. It sends an unmistakable message that we do not take our immigration laws seriously and that there is little risk and great reward for those who violate our borders."

William King, served 37 years in the U.S. Army, the Coast Guard, the Border Patrol, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He was in charge of administering the IRCA amnesty for the Western Region of the United States, which processed the bulk of the amnesty applications. "We were promised 20 years ago that along with that amnesty we would get firm enforcement, not only on the border but in the interior, as well as employer sanctions, but the enforcement side never happened. It was an enormous lie, and we've paid a terrible price for that lie. And it's happening all over again."

"In my forty-nine years of experience," Mr. King told THE NEW AMERICAN, "President George W. Bush is the worst president by far on immigration. And I say that as a Republican who voted for him." (See King's interview on page 17.)

William King and other immigration experts point to a multitude of actions and policies by President Bush that show it would be foolish to trust any promises or proposals from the administration. These include:

* Adopting the notoriously fraudulent matricula consular identification documents from Mexico and other countries that are enabling millions of aliens to illegally work, obtain welfare benefits, vote, and carry on business in the United States.

* Promising to hire 2,000 Border Patrol officers per year over five years, and then only hiring 210.

* Failing to deliver on promised expansion of detention facilities, while admitting that its "catch and release" policy results in 75 percent no-shows of aliens who are released on their own recognizance and never show up for their deportation hearings.

* Reducing employer sanctions to a nullity, with only three employer sanction investigations nationwide in 2005.

* Providing not only food stamps, education, and virtually every other welfare benefit to illegal aliens, but also taxpayer subsidized home and business loans through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Small Business Administration.

* Constantly exacerbating the already intolerable illegal alien deluge with programs for ever larger levels of legal immigration.

* Endangering our security, sovereignty, and independence by formally agreeing with the presidents of Mexico and Canada to implement the unconstitutional Security and Prosperity Partnership to merge the borders of our three nations.

The fight for immigration reform is expected to come to a head again in mid- to late February, but the critical groundwork for that epic battle will be carried out by both sides in the weeks between now and that time.

The White House and its open borders allies in Congress (in both parties) will be teaming up with powerful labor and corporate cohorts to push through a legislative package that would finish the devastation to our economy, social fabric, and security that the past several decades of uncontrolled immigration have already so far accomplished. However, they can and will be defeated if a majority of American patriots roar out their defiance and demand that their elected officials take back control of our borders.

What You Can Do

Readers are encouraged to contact their U.S. senators and representative opposing all "guest worker" amnesty programs granting legal status to illegal immigrants and further eroding our borders. To send your letter via e-mail, go to www.capwiz.com/jbsRlome/.