Senate illegal immigration amnesty: cloture or defeat. And: what you can do.

[6/7 8pm UPDATE: The bill has ceased to exist... for now. The final try at cloture failed, but the bill might come back later in the year. Please read the original entry below if you'd like to help prevent future tries at amnesty.. Like Business Week predicting a bull market just before the stock market crash, the cover of Time's June 18, 2007 issue - apparently released today - intones "Why Amnesty Makes Sense".]

[6/7 3:30pm UPDATE: On the floor right now, Harry Reid is disclosing that last Saturday he met with Cardinal Roger Mahony, and the latter called him an hour ago...]

[6/7 Noon UPDATE: The bill failed the first couple cloture votes, and there might be one later this afternoon. Harry Reid says: "It's daylight hours in Europe. Maybe [White House chief of staff] Josh Bolten can make some calls... The headlines are going to be, 'The president fails again.' It's his bill.". I'm outsourcing CSPAN-watching to Michelle Malkin and The Corner; if you want to prevent this and future amnesties, please read and act on what's below.]

I haven't concentrated on the Senate bill for various reasons, not the least of which is that I don't think it's going anywhere. And, even if it makes it out of the Senate, it will sink even more under its own weight in the House, and will also put many Senators on record as having supported one of the worst, most anti-American bills in history. And, even if Bush ends up signing it, its disastrous impacts will be known immediately. At that point, there is to a great extent no going back. However, the newly legalized former illegal aliens will not have the vote immediately, and there will still be time to take action, and there will no doubt be such a groundswell of public opinion (among those eligible to vote) that something is bound to happen, and that won't be favorable to any of those who pushed or voted for the bill.

I'm also more concerned with the larger issue of preventing future amnesties and encouraging politicians to support our laws. I have already outlined what you can do to block this and future amnesties. While that's more difficult than making phone calls, it will also be much, much, much more effective. One of the keys to this issue is that politicians feel they can get away with things like this even if they have to weather the storm of hundreds of angry phone calls for a few days.

On the other hand, if trying to push bills like this has a measurable impact on their political careers, many will think twice. Business and racial power groups can only do so much harm if politicians are afraid to carry their water. Our goal should be to make supporting illegal immigration or amnesty radioactive, something that politicians would no more do than they would support other things which are widely considered radioactive. There will always be extremists who'll keep pushing the issue, but our goal should be to make supporting illegal immigration something limited to that group rather than something that's considered mainstream.

Unfortunately, my plan has not met with much support, but that doesn't mean I won't keep pushing it. If you want to help out, here's the plan.

In any case, here are some news items related to the bill:

It's apparently been dealt a significant blow, with an amendment from Sen. Byron Dorgan passing that would end the "guest" worker program after five years. See that link for other amendments that passed and that didn't.

Later today (Thursday) Harry Reid will apparently call for a cloture vote on the bill.

Racial demagogue Robert Menendez tells a constituent that it would cost "as much as $250 billion" to deport all illegal aliens; he appears to be using an overstated figure from the Center for American Progress' "study" which used an extremely suspect methodology.

Sens. Barack Obama and Lindsey Graham traded words on the Senate floor, with the latter complaining about an amendment from the former which would have favored chain vs skilled migration.

Twenty-six Arizona state legislators, together with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, have signed a letter urging Senator Jon Kyl to back off the bill.

Monkey Boy goes to Washington.

There's an apparent list of non-committal Senators here: robertbluey.com/blog/2007/06/06/amnesty-opponents-making-progress-in-senate

Immigration2007a · Wed, 06/06/2007 - 22:17 · · Importance: 1