Issue: S. 744 Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act. (A bill to provide for comprehensive immigration reform and for other purposes.) (Sponsor: Charles Schumer, D-NY.)
Result: Passed in Senate, 68 to 32, 0 not voting. GOP and Democrats scored.
Bill Summary: S. 744 would make broad changes to U.S. immigration law. It would allow most of the country’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants to gain legal status and eventual citizenship. At the same time, it seeks to enhance border security by adding high-tech surveillance equipment, constructing double-layer fencing, and doubling the number of border patrol agents. It also makes substantial changes to the existing system of legal immigration. And it creates a $1.5 billion youth jobs program.
Some of the specifics include:
- The bill would make many of an estimated 11 million illegally in the United States eligible to apply for a new legal Registered Provisional Immigrant (RPI) status. To be eligible, they must have been physically present in the U.S. continuously since December 31, 2011. To receive RPI status they would need to pay a $500 fine and fees, any back taxes owed, learn English, and pass a background check. Those with RPI status could work lawfully in the United States. RPI status would be good for 6 years and renewable for another 4 years.
- After 10 years, immigrants who have RPI status can apply for permanent resident status (green cards), provided other border security triggers in the bill are met. After 13 years, if those same triggers are met, the immigrants can apply for citizenship.
- The bill includes the DREAM Act and the AgJOBS Act. The DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2013) provides for adjusting the immigration status of illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minor children.
- S. 744 would require all employers to use an upgraded version of the E-Verify system, equipped with a photo matching system, to determine the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States. This requirement would be phased in over five years based on company size. All job applicants (including U.S. citizens) would be required to show their employers an official photo ID, and employers would need to compare the photo with the photo provided in the E-Verify database.
Analysis: The Senate’s comprehensive immigration “reform” bill, S. 744, was written and negotiated by a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators — 4 Democrats and 4 Republicans — often referred to as the “Gang of Eight.”
S. 744 was introduced by radical Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), a member of the group, and cosponsored by the other seven members: Michael Bennet (D-CO); Richard Durbin (D-IL), Jeff Flake (R-AZ); Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John McCain (R-AZ), Bob Menendez (D-NY); and Marco Rubio (R-FL).
Before we highlight our objections to specific provisions of the package, it is important to look at the big picture —to understand the forces and agendas that have encouraged and permitted the massive illegal immigration invasion. We will find that the same forces that have fomented the problem in the first place, for subversive purposes, are currently gatekeepers for the “solution” we are now supposed to accept.
Deception rules
Americans are generally unaware that the Internationalist Establishment has supported the massive U.S. immigration invasion — legal, illegal, and legalized through amnesty — of the past several decades.
We can point to the Insider-supported open borders movement (see, for example, the Wall Street Journal’s call for open borders in an editorial entitled “Open NAFTA Borders? Why Not?” for July 2, 2001), Ford foundation funding of revolutionary immigrant organizations and legal challenges to border enforcement, and even the Conspiracy’s support for revolution and poverty in Mexico.
The internationalists see the immigration invasion as a prime opportunity to destroy America’s middle class and transform our nation into something easier to merge into their new world order.
In 1996, syndicated columnist Georgie Ann Geyer wrote Americans No More: The Death of Citizenship. Her book should have been a wake-up call, as it included admissions against interest by someone with both radical liberal and Establishment credentials. Georgie Ann Geyer was (and is) a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an open disciple of the late Marxist and radical organizer Saul Alinsky. Let’s see what Geyer had to say.
Geyer’s book described how radicals were following the strategy of infiltration advocated by Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci to render impotent every tenet of our culture. Geyer claims that, in pursuit of this strategy, Marxists have infected “American universities, unions, churches, bureaucracies, and corporations…. Three whole generations, often its best students and thinkers and even labor leaders, were formed with a Marxist component to their thoughts and actions, often without even knowing it.”
Americans No More didn’t just focus on the visible activists. Geyer documented how Insider tax-exempt foundations had helped to create ethnic grievance groups. She even provided personal testimony. In the early 1980s, Geyer met with “two representatives of one of the major and supposedly representative ‘Hispanic’ groups, the National Council of La Raza.” When Geyer asked, “How many members do you have?,” one of the representatives admitted, “Well, we don’t have members.”
An incredulous Geyer demanded to know how an organization without members could fund and support its activities. The representatives replied, almost in unison, “The Ford Foundation!” As Geyer tells the story: “The two smiled as though they did not have a care in the world, and, indeed, financially, they did not. To promote and push through their programs and policies, they needed no elections, no campaign strategies, and none of that bothersome business of fund-raising or member-seeking. At the same time, of course, they basically suffered accountability neither to disparate sources of funding nor to the fickle interests of individuals.” With such support, La Raza could boast 150 organizations in 36 states!
By examining the flow of funds, one quickly discovers that the Ford Foundation virtually created the radical Chicano movement, which seeks open borders, uncontrolled immigration from Mexico, and the de facto reconquest by Mexico of the Southwest portion of the United States (termed Atzlan by the radicals).
The revolutionary/Insider agenda driving the immigration “reform” movement was apparent in the nationwide May Day demonstrations in 2013. In Los Angeles, for example: “Police and downtown commuters braced Wednesday for clogged streets and blocked intersections as tens of thousands of immigration supporters planned to march in annual May Day demonstrations.” (latimes.com 5-1-13)
The mainstream media never informs the public how these demonstrations are organized. Neither is the public told of the socialist/Communist significance of May Day demonstrations, what the organizers expect their demonstrations to accomplish, and certainly not why the organizers are really demanding immigration “reform.”
Specific objections
Although S. 744 provides for increased border security as a precondition for allowing illegal aliens to earn either permanent resident status or citizenship, skepticism is well justified. Those familiar with the history of U.S. border enforcement over the past several decades, the frequent amnesties and political promises not kept, and the “open borders” agenda of the Establishment should regard these provisions as merely bait that will be circumvented later.
Incredibly, Charles Schumer revealed the lack of Democratic commitment to border security: “Schumer said the [Boehner proposed] strategy of passing smaller-scale bills would not work. He said, for instance, that Democrats would not support an enforcement bill without the promise of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.” — Foxnews.com (6-30-13)
We also strongly object to the effort to shift the blame for the refusal of the federal government to carry out its constitutionally authorized function of securing our borders on to the backs of employers and turn employers into federal enforcers. The proposed E-Verify system mandate on employers would require all employees, citizens or not, to receive approval from the government before they could work in the United States.
This is an incredibly dangerous power grab by Big Brother government.
Even though we regard the ACLU’s support for civil liberties as a deception, we have to agree with their analysis of the proposed system:
“In an attempt to stop the tiny percentage of those starting jobs in the United States each year who are unauthorized workers, E-Verify would force everyone to obtain affirmative permission from government bureaucracies before engaging in the core life functions of working and earning a living.”
The fact that the goals of S. 744 have the support of the Obama White House should also alarm.
We have assigned (good vote) to the Nays and (bad vote) to the Yeas. (P = voted present; ? = not voting; blank = not listed on roll call.)