Freshman Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.) has cosponsored the CLEAR Act, H.R.100, that would increase interior enforcement by requiring the federal government to work with local municipalities to enforce immigration laws. By cosponsoring the bill, Rep. Palazzo has now cosponsored at least one bill in each category of our "5 Great Solutions".
Former Sen. Rick Santorum zoomed from the back of the GOP pack on immigration issues to way out FRONT at a C-SPAN televised event in South Carolina on Friday. For the first time since 2007, we have a Presidential candidate who says LEGAL immigration numbers are too high!
Freshman Rep. Rich Nugent (R-Fla.) has joined NumbersUSA's 5-for-5 Club after cosponsoring Rep. Marsha Blackburn's Clear Law Enforcement for Criminal Alien Removal (CLEAR) Act of 2011. The CLEAR Act of 2011 would help local law enforcement detect, arrest and detain illegal aliens in their communties.
Rep. Ed Royce has joined NumbersUSA's 5-for-5 Club after cosponsoring the SAFE for America Act, which would end the Visa Lottery. Rep. Royce has now cosponsored at least one bill in each of our 5 Great Immigration-Reduction categories and joins 10 other Members of Congress to cosponsor a bill in each of the categories.
While the nation has been transfixed by the recent debt ceiling debate, 22 million Americans have continued their search for a full-time job. Now that a compromise on the debt ceiling has been reached, Members of both parties are promising to get back to work creating jobs. Yet their promises are hard to believe considering both parties have refused to act on one of the most pressing job-related issues -- lowering annual immigration levels.
Freshman Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) has cosponsored the SAFE for America Act, H.R.704, that would end the Visa Lottery. By cosponsoring the bill, Rep. Brooks has now cosponsored at least one bill in each category of our "5 Great Solutions". While Rep. Brooks is only serving his first term in Congress, he's cosponsored more than a dozen immigration-reduction bills and was identified as a "True Reformer" during last year's mid-term elections.
After three years of a Jobs Depression, we saw today the first action by Congress to stop driving up unemployment by importing so many immigrant workers.
The House Judiciary Committee voted 19-11 just before noon to pass H.R. 704, the SAFE for America Act, to end the Visa Lottery. (See roll call at bottom of blog.)
Federal judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed a class action lawsuit filed by foreign nationals who were denied green cards because of a computer glitch during this year's visa lottery selection. The plantiffs were first notified by the State Department that they had won permanent residency in the United States due to the random lottery drawing, but the State Department realized that a computer glitch causes most of the winners to be picked from only a small sample of applicants.
Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), and Steve Palazzo (R-Miss.) have co-sponsored the bi-partisan SAFE for America Act of 2011 that would end the Visa Lottery. The Visa Lottery issues 50,000 green cards based on "random selection" instead of humanitarian need, family connection, or other economic or cultural value to the United States.
The visa lottery program presents a national security threat.
Under the program, each successful applicant is chosen at random and given the status of permanent resident based on pure luck. A perfect example of the system gone awry is the case of Hesham Mohamed Ali Hedayet, the Egyptian national who killed two and wounded three during a shooting spree at Los Angeles International Airport in July of 2002. He was allowed to apply for lawful permanent resident status in 1997 because of his wife’s status as a visa lottery winner.
Freshmen Reps. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.), Rich Nugent (R-Fla.), and Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) have co-sponsored the bi-partisan SAFE for America Act of 2011 that would end the Visa Lottery. The Visa Lottery issues 50,000 green cards based on "random selection" instead of humanitarian need, family connection, or other economic or cultural value to the United States.
Reps. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.), and Sam Johnson (R-Texas) have co-sponsored the bi-partisan SAFE for America Act of 2011 that would end the Visa Lottery. The Visa Lottery issues 50,000 green cards based on "random selection" instead of humanitarian need, family connection, or other economic or cultural value to the United States.
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement hosted a hearing Tuesday afternoon to debate H.R.704, the SAFE for America Act, which would end the Visa Lottery Program. While debate of the issue was engaging, speeches on the House floor and a suspicious package led to only three Members of Congress taking part in the hearing.
Reps. Randy Forbes (R-Va.), David McKinley (R-W.V.), and Bill Posey (R-Fla.) have co-sponsored the bi-partisan SAFE for America Act of 2011 that would end the Visa Lottery. The Visa Lottery issues 50,000 green cards based on "random selection" instead of humanitarian need, family connection, or other economic or cultural value to the United States.
Rep. Sue Myrick has joined NumbersUSA's 5-for-5 club by co-sponsoring all 5 of our 5 Great Immigration Bills. On Wednesday, Rep. Myrick co-sponsored the CLEAR Act - a bill that would assist local law agencies in the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
Reps. John Carter (R-Texas), Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), and Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) have co-sponsored the bi-partisan SAFE for America Act of 2011 that would end the Visa Lottery.
Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) has joined the NumbersUSA 5-for-5 club. On Thursday, he added his name to the list of co-sponsors for Rep. Bob Goodlatte's (R-Va.) SAFE for America Act (H.R.704) that would end the Visa Lottery. By doing so, he has now co-sponsored at least one bill in each of our 5 Great Bill categories.
Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) has become the first Congressman in the 112th Congress to earn 5-for-5 status from NumbersUSA. Rep. Jones earned the status by co-sponsoring all five of our "5 Great Immigration-Reduction Bills".
Reps. John Kline (R-Minn.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) have co-sponsored the bi-partisan SAFE for America Act of 2011 that would end the Visa Lottery. The Visa Lottery issues 50,000 green cards based on "random selection" instead of humanitarian need, family connection, or other economic or cultural value to the United States.
Reps. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), Michael Conaway (R-Texas), Lamar Smith (R-Texas, and Frank Wolf (R-Va.) have co-sponsored the bi-partisan SAFE for America Act of 2011 that would end the Visa Lottery.
Four Immigration-Reduction Champions, Reps. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.), Steve King (R-Iowa), and Sue Myrick (R-N.C.), have co-sponsored the bi-partisan SAFE for America Act of 2011 that would end the Visa Lottery.
Democratic Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) have co-sponsored Rep. Bob Goodlatte's (R-Va.) bi-partisan SAFE for America Act of 2011 that would end the Visa Lottery.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) reintroduced his SAFE for America Act (H.R.704) this week, which would in effect shut down the Visa Lottery. The lottery issues 50,000 green cards per year without any regard to their humanitarian needs, what they might offer the country or their having any family connections here.
Once again, voters have been denied a chance to see congressional roll call votes on immigration. Despite hundreds of roll call votes on amendments to H.R. 1 (the Continuing Resolution) in the House the last three days, not a single immigration amendment that was introduced actually was allowed to come up for a vote.
Publicists working for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have carefully hidden the central role of the Diversity Visa program (the visa lottery) in an extensive and brutal forced labor case involving young women from Africa.
The Diversity Visa program brings 50,000 people to the U.S. every year; people with no connections to the U.S., people without either needed skills, or refugee status, or money to invest; people who have simply won a free government lottery. For more on this program see this blog.
In June 2005, NumbersUSA's Director of Government Relations Rosemary Jenks testified before the House Immigration, Border Security, and Claims Subcommittee. In her testimony, she discussed the origin of the Visa Lottery and the impact Special Interest groups had on its creation. She discussed the programs inability to add "diverstiy" to the immigrant flow to the United States, and she discussed why, regardless of the "diversity" aspect, the Visa Lottery is bad policy for the United States.
Introduction
Last night, the House unanimously approved a resolution that lists the remaining amendments to H.R.1 that will receive consideration. Three of the four immigration-related amendments will not come up for a vote, but Rep. Ted Poe's amendment to prevent funding to the Department of Justice to be used in the lawsuit against Arizona will receive a vote. Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and urge your House Rep to support this amendment. Click here for a full description of the amendments that were under consideration and our position on each.
Later this week, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) will be introducing the Strengthening Our Commitment to Legal Immigration and America's Security Act that would eliminate the Visa Lottery, strengthen interior enforcement, and require the implementation of an exit procedure for foreign visitors to the United States.
The Visa Lottery Program is managed by the Department of State and awards up to 55,000 permanent resident visas a year to applicants from countries with relatively low rates of immigration to the United States compared to other countries, based on data from the previous five years.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a record 15 million people applied this year for the visa lottery – a program that hands out 50,000 green cards per year based on chance. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R –Va.), the author of a bill to terminate the visa lottery, says the program threatens national security, results in the unfair administration of our immigration laws, and encourages a cottage industry for fraudulent opportunists.
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) became a cosponsor of Rep. Heath Shuler's (D-N.C.) SAVE Act. In doing so, he has joined an elite group of Congressmen and women who have cosponsored NumbersUSA's 5 great immigration bills. These bills are the SAVE Act, the Nuclear Family Priority Act, the SAFE Act, the Birthright Citizenship Act, and the CLEAR Act.
Rep. Nathan Deal (R-Ga.) added his name to the list of cosponsors for the SAFE Act, which would eliminate the visa lottery. Rep. Deal is the sponsor for the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2009, which is one of our 5 Great Immigration-Reduction Bills, and with his sponsorship of the visa lottery bill, he is now a sponsor of all five bills.
Rep. Parker Griffith, who recently switched his party affiliation from the Democrats to the Republicans, has sponsored three of NumbersUSA's "5 Great Immigration-Reduction Bills." Rep. Griffith has already been a cosponsor of the SAVE Act.
What Pres. Obama says -- or doesn't say -- about immigration will be the easiest tip-off to whether his first priority truly is putting Americans back to work. Or whether his talk about jobs is mainly a political ploy to gain back support from Independent voters. Here is what he should say . . .
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, who also serves as the Vice-Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the committee's chair urging him to consider a bill that would put an end to the Visa Lottery (H.R. 2305).
There were 26 original cosponsors when Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) introduced the SAFE of 2009 (H.R.2305). The bill would put an end to the Visa Lottery, which awards 50,000 green cards per year without regard to merit. NumbersUSA would like to recognize the original 26 cosponsors who favor reduced immigration numbers.
Congress and the Administration still plan to take 50,000 U.S. jobs later this year and raffle them off to foreign workers on pure chance. Never mind that 14 million unemployed Americans are looking for a job. If that doesn't make any sense to you, get passionate about Rep. Bob Goodlatte's SAFE for America Act (H.R. 2305). Let's kill this absurd lottery before autumn.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) reintroduced his SAFE for America Act (H.R.2305) last night, which would in effect shut down the Visa Lottery. The lottery issues 50,000 green cards per year without any regard to their humanitarian needs, what they might offer the country or their having any family connections here.
A national crisis requires bold action. NumbersUSA today urged President-Elect Obama to immediately suspend most importation of foreign workers to give relief to the American workers who will be left without a job if the importation continues. Unlike all other emergency recommendations, our call to action would not cost hundreds of billions of dollars. In fact, it would cost almost nothing.
On Wednesday, January 7th, NumbersUSA mailed a letter to President-elect Barack Obama urging him to make Americans and already-resident legal immigrants his top priority. In the letter, we urged Obama to temporarily suspend the importation of most foreign workers, chain migration and the visa lottery. Also, we urged him to fully fund E-Verify and make it mandatory for all employers. If you haven't taken action to support American workers, now is the time! If you haven't done so already, please join more than 138,000 members and sign the petition to support American workers. Also, check your action buffet for faxes to send to your elected officials. Read the letter!
In asking Georgia voters to send him back to the U.S. Senate, Saxby Chambliss promised to support 12 immigration actions that NumbersUSA considers the most important for protecting American workers, communities and our heritage of individual freedom and natural bounty. His defeated opponent basically only promised to grant an amnesty to 12-20 million illegal foreign workers and their dependents. Georgia voters chose the "True Immigration Reform Candidate."
The visa lottery was established by the Immigration Act of 1990 in an attempt to bring individuals to the U.S. from countries that had been sending few immigrants to the United States in the past. Currently, approximately 50,000 foreign nationals per year are awarded visas based on pure luck to come and live permanently in the United States under the visa lottery program.
Problems with the Visa Lottery Program
On March 9, 2007, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and Rep. Stephanie Herseth (D-SD) introduced H.R. 1430 -- The Security and Fairness Enhancement for America Act of 2007 – which, if enacted, would eliminate the visa
