Dear Friends and allies,

Have you noticed how little news coverage the immigration/amnesty issue has been receiving lately?

You and I may still see a massive pro-amnesty colossus bearing down upon us. But there are more indications than ever that this mighty amnesty colossus has feet of clay.

Item: a June 14 pro-amnesty rally on Capitol Hill featured "Sens. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.)" as well as what were claimed to be one million pro-amnesty letters. Roll Call reported on Monday that the boxes to which these pro-amnesty politicos were pointing were actually empty. "Security reasons" claimed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Item: Senate Democrats are getting their fair share of anti-amnesty calls. Worse, organized labor, a Democratic Party backbone, is divided on the wisdom of the legislation. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers contributed more money ($3,224,536) than any other union to Democrats in 2006. They oppose the bill.

Item: The White House has scheduled an urgent briefing for religious conservatives on the issue of stem cell research for Wednesday, June 20th, apparently on extremely short notice. This is reminiscent of White House efforts to win support for Harriet Miers by granting some face time to "those people." (Look over here. Pay no attention to that immigration debate.)

The situation as of June 19th

If things go according to plan, another vote will be taken to limit debate ("invoke cloture") on the immigration bill on Friday, June 22nd.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will need 60 votes to prevail. The Senate Democratic caucus has 51 members, including one admitted Socialist (Sanders of Vermont) and an ailing Tim Johnson of South Dakota. Reid cannot even rely upon his own caucus for even 51 votes because not all Senate Democrats support the immigration bill.

Reid must also contend with the political needs of Senators Biden, Clinton, Dodd and Obama, presidential candidates all. One of their competitors, former Senator John Edwards, is being encouraged to "Come out against Bush's Immigration Bill because it is so unpopular.

Trying to Fool Senate Republicans (again)

What's a Senate Majority Leader to do? Try to fool enough Republicans to save the amnesty bill, of course.

Step one: convince the necessary number of Republicans that they should vote for cloture now because they can always vote against the amnesty bill later.

The difference between a procedural vote and a substantive vote looms large in the minds of some Senators. Consider this excerpt from a speech by Senator Robert Bennett (R., Utah) on May 22, 2000:

When I ran in 1998, my opponent stood up before the crowds, on television, whatever, and said, "Senator Bennett is pro-tobacco" [an incendiary charge in heavily Mormon Utah]. . . . I didn't remember voting with the tobacco interests once. "No, he is lying about his record. Here it is."

Then we go into the web site where he has all of this listed under the fetching title, "What Senator Bennett Doesn't Want You To Know," and here is the list of all of my "pro-tobacco" votes. What were they? They were procedural votes, votes on motions to table, votes in support of the leader moving legislation forward. On the one tobacco vote that counted, which was a cloture vote on Senator McCain's bill, I was in the antitobacco forces [emphasis added].

Actually, a procedural vote can actually be even worse when Senate rules require a supermajority of 60 votes to move a bill along, but only a bare majority to pass it..

Step two: limit further debate as much as possible.

Those who think a bill originally 323-pages long (which has zoomed past 400 pages as of today) should be subject to extensive debate need to understand that extensive debate is exactly what Reid seeks to avoid.

Reid has good reason to do so, noted Mickey Kaus:

Gallup's own finding that those who are paying the most attention [to the immigration debate] are the most lopsidedly (61% to 17%) opposed to the bill is hardly evidence that they'd support it.

Step three: allow a few votes on "tolerable" Republican amendments, knowing that any amendment the Senate passes to the immigration bill can be repealed as necessary later on by a House-Senate conference committee.

If any immigration legislation ever reaches a House-Senate Conference Committee, the bill will not improve. Anti-amnesty Republicans need to remember that the Democrats control both chambers, and the White House will be involved too. Anything these conferees oppose might just as well have been written in disappearing ink.

Whatever immigration bill emerges from such a conference will likely be even worse than what the Senate votes to pass, as Ezra Klein of the American Prospect gleefully reminded his readers: "liberals will remember the many times that Republicans used Conference in recent years to make compromise bills into conservative wish lists."

Can amnesty opponents in the Senate successfully filibuster an immigration conference report? Yes, but as Paul Weyrich told me this past Friday, he has seen only two conference reports stopped that way during his 40 years in Washington, D.C.

The time to make a stand is when you have the best chance to defeat or at least badly hurt the forces your are opposing. That was the lesson of the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans defied the mighty Persian army and saved Western Civilization.

Insist Your Two Senators Oppose Cloture

The time for anti-amnesty Senators to make their stand is on the very first cloture motion on Friday, June 22nd. Tell them a vote for cloture is a vote for amnesty. A vote for cloture is also a vote against all the good amendments that the Senate will not be allowed to even consider.

Action requested:

(1) Call, fax or e-mail your two Senators and remind them that a vote for cloture is a vote for amnesty. English First has set up an email service here.

(2) Call or e-mail the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The NRSC 's mission is to elect Republican Senators. You should remind them that if Senate Republicans make it possible for the amnesty bill to pass, the chances of Republican Senators being reelected in 2008 will not be good.

The NRSC's telephone number is (202) 675-6000. Their web site is here. Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) is NRSC's chairman. His job is to help elect Republicans in every state, so residents of every state should be sure to contact him and ask him to oppose cloture "for the good of the NRSC's Senate candidates." His telephone number is (202) 224-6244. His fax is (202) 228-2193.

Thank you.

Jim Boulet, Jr.

Executive Director

English First

Questions or comments? E-mail jbouletATenglishfirst.org (replace AT with @)

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