Pelosi BlinksHouse Democrats pull Homeland Security spending bill over immigration issue, showing even our blue-state efforts can make a difference. Dear James,
Good news! House Democrats have pulled funding for the Department of Homeland Security from a spending bill. This is good news because Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee planned to use Homeland Security funding to impose extremist immigration provisions.
Reportedly, Democrats from vulnerable districts didn't want to have to defend the extremist, immigration-related provisions contained in the bill.
I list those provisions below, so you can see just how extreme they are. These vulnerable Democrats from more moderate districts balked because they knew we would be hammering them if they went ahead! Without our pressure, they would have nothing to worry about.
We need to keep the pressure on all our elected officials in Washington.
To do that, we need your support. Please give. James, I've read so many letters from people wondering whether it really does any good to send letters and phone calls to people like Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "We're obviously not going to change her mind," they say. Well, she's probably not going to suddenly turn into Barbara Jordan, the late Democratic congresswoman whose commission on immigration inspired the creation of NumbersUSA. But this week, we saw that even she just might temper the radicalism of some of her more extreme colleagues.
Here are some of the worst provisions of the bill that was pulled from consideration:
1) | Would have limited ICE detention beds to 10,000, compared to a recent high of 55,000.
| 2)
| Would have prohibited detention of families, all but guaranteeing their release and encouraging future surges of family units at the border.
| 3)
| Would have prohibited the removal of aliens who have been given TemporaryProtected Status but have since lost it.
| 4)
| Would have exposed more blue-collar jobs to foreign worker competitionand called for an increase in temporary work visas, despite the tens of millions of Americans looking for work.
| 5)
| Would have drastically cut funding for immigration enforcement, and prohibited reallocation of funding.
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In essence, the bill would have made it take far longer to remove illegal aliens, but at the same time, it would gravely restrict holding them. In short, the bill would have required something close to open borders.
Politico, the Capitol Hill newspaper, quoted a congressional staffer explaining why the bill was pulled:
"Front-line members raised serious concerns that the Homeland bill was a tough vote in swing districts because of its progressive provisions. At the end of the day, front-liners are our majority makers and there is no reason to force them to take a tough vote."
The newspaper also quoted the chair of Homeland Security appropriations committee Lucille Roybard-Allard,
"This is probably the most progressive Homeland Security bill that has ever been presented to the House... It literally has everything in it that the advocates, the members have told me over the years had to be in the bill."
I have to hand it to the staffer who described members concerned about such immigration extremism as "front-line." This isn't about how progressive or moderate a politician is. Most often, the issue is whether politicians in Washington care more about special interest groups and corporate lobbyists or their own constituents.
Voters want Washington to put aside the extremism and get America back to work!!!
NumbersUSA has always been committed to the American worker. Because we rely so heavily on donations from our activists, when joblessness affects them, it affects our fundraising, too. We recently polled our members and found that 40% of our donors had lost jobs within their family. That's caused a huge gape in our fundraising.
The good news is that we've always followed best practices, financially. We've earned top ratings from the Better Business Bureau, America's Best Charities, Charity Navigator and Guidestar for, among other best practices, efficiently and securely using the donations our members have entrusted to us. So we've been able to keep fighting.
The bad news is that our shortfalls can't last forever. We need our members who can afford to do so to step up and make sure we can continue to do everything possible to get twenty million people working again and re-establish our nation's self-determination!
Please donate today!
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