Weekly NumbersUSA Summary

After 4 Senate Victories, How Do We Protect Them From Backroom Death? By Roy Beck, Friday, July 10, 2009 Most of you are shocked by the Senate's passage of 4 immigration enforcement amendments this week that would open up hundreds of thousands of jobs to unemployed Americans over the next year alone. This is the Senate that has stood against U.S. workers in favor of illegal aliens repeatedly. While the victories really do represent great progress for our side, we also can be 95% sure that Senate Leader Reid, House Speaker Pelosi and Pres. Obama have every intention of killing these amendments in a backroom deal, just like they killed House-passed enforcement in March. Senate Approves No-Match -- Overturns Napolitano's New Order By Chris Chmielenski, Thursday, July 9, 2009 The Senate approved with a voice vote this morning Sen. Vitter's No-Match amendment to the Homeland Security Appropriations bill. It's another big victory after approving two amendments on Wednesday. E-VERIFY VICTORY -- 8 Senators Switch Sides Since March Defeat By Roy Beck, Wednesday, July 8, 2009 A 9.5% unemployment rate and stories of returning National Guardsmen who can't find jobs -- plus constant pressure from home-state voters -- has finally produced a victory for mandating government contractors to use E-Verify to keep from hiring illegal aliens. After several defeated efforts, Sen. Sessions finally won over a majority of his colleagues this morning. Especially interesting to all of us are the 8 Senators who voted to kill this mandate in March but who supported it today. Business Week Focuses on my Efforts in the H-1B Reform Movement By Norm Matloff, Tuesday, July 7, 2009 BusinessWeek was originally going to do a piece on the various players in the H-1B reform movement, but decided to focus on me instead. The article entitled “An Academic's Labor Helps Fight H-1B Visas" ran on June 28, and of course, I do have some comments. Structure of Independence as Important as the Declaration -- Thanks, James Madison By Roy Beck, Monday, July 6, 2009 A few more thoughts at the end of a weekend of our national birthday celebration . . . On July 4, 1788, James Madison arrived on the doorsteps of Mount Vernon, having ridden directly from Richmond after the Virginia convention ratified the U.S. Constitution. That afternoon, the young Madison and the august George Washington began a long and intense collaboration on how the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence adopted 12 years earlier could be sustained.

Recent News...

• Senate Adopts Vitter and Grassley Amendments -- 4th Victory in a Row!
• Senate Passes Sessions' E-Verify Amendment
• Senate Adopts DeMint Border Fence Amendment
• E-Verify Bill Passes N.C. State Committee
• Rep. Jack Kingston to offer E-Verify Amendments to House Appropriation Mark-ups
• Major US Cities see Rise in Population
• Columnist Disconnects Statue of Liberty and Immigration

Four Victories in the Senate!!!

In last week's newsletter, I wrote about how quiet things were with Congress out of town for the Fourth of July recess. But how things can change in just one week! Four immigration-reduction amendments to the Homeland Security spending bill were offered on the floor of the Senate this week, and thanks to you, we won all four!

Things were a bit crazy at NumbersUSA's two Washington-area offices on Wednesday and Thursday. The tech staff was hard at work making sure our website could handle our second busiest day of the year in terms of visitors, while the web content team in the Arlington, Va. office kept up-to-the-minute information on our front page to keep you informed to everything that was happening. (We even have the video of Sen. Jeff Sessions' floor speech defending E-Verify on our front page). Our legislative team in our Capitol Hill office coordinated all our advocacy efforts, informing us to who NumbersUSA members should be directing their phone calls.

Both Wednesday and Thursday were late nights for every member of our staff, but it was well worth it to witness four victories! However, we need you to keep the pressure on because, as you'll read in Roy's new blog above, we need to make sure the amendments aren't stripped out of the spending bill during a secret, backroom conference committee between House and Senate leaders. This may be our only chance this year.

Also be sure to click on our Vote Trackers in the upper right of this email. That is where we present you with how each Senator voted on each important immigration issue. Your website team tries to provide these Vote Trackers within an hour of the official votes becoming available. Being able to hold each elected official immediately accountable is one of our most important functions.

As always, there will be several new faxes appearing on your Action Buffet throughout the upcoming days. So make sure you thank the Senators that voted for these four amendments and blast the ones that didn't. And thank you for all your phone calls into Washington and for making Wednesday our second busiest day of the year in visitors to our website.

Thanks,
Chris Chmielenski
Website Content Manager