Illegal immigration opponents rally in Vegas, plot strategy

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Hundreds of illegal immigration opponents rallied in Las Vegas and pledged to fight a Senate plan that legalizes undocumented Mexicans in the U.S.

The two-day Unite to Fight Summit II, which ended Sunday, drew about 350 activists from across the nation.

"This is aimed at getting everyone on the same page," said organizer Mark Edwards, a local radio show host and founder of the Wake Up America Foundation. "You have to try new tactics and see what works."

Outside the Cashman Theatre, about 100 protesters carried U.S. flags and shouted "Racists go home."

Inside, activists stressed there was a difference between legal and illegal immigration.

"I have nothing against immigrants who come here legally," Edwards told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Speaker Robert Vasquez, a county commissioner from Idaho, agreed: "There's nothing racist about enforcing the law equally."

Speakers accused illegal immigrants of waging war against the U.S., and charged the federal government with being unresponsive to the wishes of most Americans.

"This is the most unprecedented Trojan horse invasion in the history of our country," said Jim Gilchrist, founder of the anti-immigration group Minuteman Project. "And if our government wants a war, we will fight them with the First Amendment and the right to assembly peaceably."

MY MESSAGE TO CONGRESS:

Like many Americans, I am very concerned about the direction of the immigration enforcement and policy in this country, concerned enough to have personally read through most of the text of both bills passed in Congress, HR4437 and S.2611. I appreciate your proposals, given to the Heritage foundation last week. Here is my input as you go into conference with the Senate.

It is clear to most Americans that we need "ENFORCEMENT FIRST". Twenty years of amnesties and lax enforcement has led us to our situation of millions of illegal immigrants in this country. It won’t get fixed overnight, but when a boat has a leak and is sinking the first thing to do is to plug the leak. Secure the border, and establish working employment verification systems to enforce immigration laws in the workplace. Establish the rule of law in our immigration system first before you do anything else. HR4437 does this, and the conference bill should as well.

The Senate bill S.2611 takes the wrong approach and repeats mistakes made in the 1986 bill, granting an open-ended legalization/citizenship path, aka amnesty. Worse, it is filled with many flawed 'poison pill' provisions that undercut border and interior immigration law enforcement. The bill should be scrapped outright.

The conferees should start from the text of HR4437, make minimal amount of adjustments from Senate side, and report out essentially the House bill. This is not just my view, but most American voters' views when they are informed of the legislative provisions. Stacked head to head, the House bill received 56 percent support while the Senate bill received 28 percent support in the Zogby America survey.

If there are to be any provisions for legalization for illegal immigrants and/or a new guest worker program, there needs to be clear ground rules on what to do and what not to do:

The first rule is ENFORCEMENT FIRST. No legalization or worker visa should happen until borders are secure and new employment verification systems are up and running. Use Isaakson Amendment language so that any new visa category, temporary worker program or legalization cannot get implemented until DHS has fully implemented border security and employment verification.
A real employment verification system must be extended to all employers, funded, implemented and must be allowed to work: Senate bill provisions are destined to fail and put burdens on the Federal Govt that actually stymie workplace enforcement, as explained by Senator Cornyn in Senate debate. Eliminate the Senate language; the House approach is better.

Illegal immigrants should not be granted benefits or amnesty in this bill. This means:

- NO path to permanent residency and citizenship; any path to full legalization should be through their home countries and the regular immigration and visa process, subject to overall immigration limits (so we don’t ‘solve’ the immigration problem by surrendering to a flood of permanent immigration);
- NO amnesty of any prior tax liabilities or prior immigration orders;
- NO Social security benefits based on fraudulent social security numbers;
- NO In-state tuition rates (i.e., remove DREAM Act provisions);
- NO welfare, EITC or other Government benefits on temporary worker visas

We should maintain permanent immigration limits, limiting annual number of permanent immigrants accepted, inclusive of immigration flows from legalized illegal immigrants: One of the great flaws of the Senate bill is the open-ended legalization that removes control over total immigration flow. Instead, we should have a total overall cap on LPR (permanent residency) applications accepted per year. LPR applications should be selected on available slots in visa category limits and based on the best applicants with respect to wage levels, skill/education levels, and English proficiency. A total annual numerical cap will ensure that total immigration flows are bounded.
Do not over-regulate employment and wages: Remove the Davis-Bacon provisions and ease prevailing wage provisions; Remove the provisions for ‘just cause’ firing. Regulations should be consistent across visa categories ( make H1B and unskilled visa employment regs similar).
Eliminate invitations to fraud: Statements such as "recognizes and takes into account the difficulties encountered by aliens in obtaining evidence of employment due to the undocumented status of the alien." in the Senate bill, is an invitation to fraudulent applications. The INS should instead interpret documentation submissions from a perspective that avoids accepting fraudulent applications. Provisions that prohibit the use of information in applications for any other use is counterproductive to investigations and fraud reduction. Spousal abuse amnesty provisions are an invitation to both fraud and false allegations. Delete these provisions.
The "Earned legalization" package of S.2611 should be eliminated – it is amnesty.
Diversity quotas should be eliminated (as House bill does), and replaced with simple rules limiting the immigration from any one country to a fraction (e.g. under 10%) of our total legal immigration flows. As we increase employment-based immigration visa quotas, correspondingly lower family-sponsorship quotas;for example, adult sibling sponsorship.
Temporary Guest Worker Program should mean what it says: NO path to Permanent Residency and citizenship; Eliminate the path to LPR adjustment or greatly reduce it from current Senate bill wrongly has no caps on permanent residency applications from those getting adjustment from illegal alien status. Use Hutchison or Kyl-Cornyn bills as legislative language for a real guest worker program. Do not allow for self-sponsorship for LPR adjustment, and eliminate lax work requirements; this visa should be employer-sponsored only.
If you don’t fully drop the Senate bill language, then many additional flaws and problems in the Senate bill must NOT be part of a conference bill, including:

Miniscule work requirements in the AgJobs portion of the bill
Requirement to advise Mexico prior to building any fencing
AgJobs gives taxpayer-funded lawyers for filing alien appeals, and requirements for lawyers to write applications
Gives unlimited family legalization/amnesty when one member qualifies (H-4 visa)
Insufficient border security and border fence provisions compared with the House bill
A terrorist loophole that restricts arrests on civil immigration violations
Changes how immigration courts are run in ways that will worsen how they operate

There is a national consensus that we must secure our borders and enforce the immigration laws better. While we should find a reasonable approach to handle illegal immigrants in the U.S. now, there is no consensus on the answer. The Senate bill is not the answer, it repeats errors of the 1986 massive legalization/amnesty and contains far too many provisions that incite further illegal immigration and undermine the rule of law in immigration.

The conference should write a bill that covers the critical needs in immigration:

Secure the border first
Set up an employment verification system that works
Streamline deportation and immigration law to reduce litigation in deportations
Involve State and local law enforcement in immigration law enforcement

All of that is embodied in the House bill today, HR4437, and should be readily adopted by the conference committee. Such a common-ground bill would be a good ‘down payment’ on immigration reform that deals with the immediate immigration crisis and helps move us forward to address remaining immigration issues.

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