[Critics] accuse Sessions of stretching the facts to play to the fears of poor and lower-middle class voters in Alabama who worry that a wave of immigrants could hurt them economically.
"He is playing to a segment of Alabama society that is scared," said Helen Hamilton Rivas,[Email her] an immigrant-rights advocate who has lived in Alabama since 1980. "Fear drives a lot of the anti-immigrant stuff…
In fact, of course, poor and lower-middle class Alabamians have
every reason to fear intensified workplace competition—as liberals like
Ted Rall, Bernie Sanders, and
John Judis, are now
admitting.
Inadvertently revealing the ethnic animosity driving the immigration enthusiasts’ agenda, ABC reported:
Immigrant advocates like [founder and executive director of “America's Voice” Frank] Sharry also like to refer to the Alabamian by his full name—Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III—to conjure up an image of a Confederate general leading the charge.
"We can no longer overtly be tough on African-Americans, but we can overtly be tough on Latinos because we can hide behind the rule of law argument," is how Sharry summed up Sessions' immigration views.
Typically, the liberal mind
refuses to notice that American blacks are the most harmed by
mass immigration of
cheapie low-skill foreigners.The Senator from Alabama was resolute and calm throughout the
two-day marathon Judiciary Committee markup. He was not dissuaded by
Chairman Patrick Leahy's snarky asides about his many amendments. Sessions’ strategy: to highlight the faults of the legislation and make good-faith attempts to improve it. He stood for
Americans who need to have jobs, whose rights are being shoved aside to make way for
30 million cheap new foreign workers in the next decade.
The markup looked like normal order on the surface, but the
Gangsters met in advance to decide which tiny changes they would allow. Treason Lobby flack Frank Sharry was
cheered by the solidarity of the Open-Borders group,
gloating, "The Gang of Eight has . . . accepted a number of Republican amendments, but none of them undermine the core elements of the bill."
But Sessions' amendments and explanations have helped map out the highly complex bill to those concerned citizens who don't speak in legislative language. His strategy was a great success in communicating the true nature of the bill—and its fundamental falsehood about requiring effective enforcement. (Sessions’ website presents informative
press releases, many of which have lately discussed the amnesty, and the
Sessions YouTube channel has some of his best video clips from the hearing).
In sports, reporters talk about the
"tale of the tape," meaning the relevant statistics. In S.744, much can be similarly learned from the more than 300 amendments,
listed by the Senate according to the authors.
Most of the Democrat committee members offered just a handful of amendments, because the original bill is practically perfect, according to its authors. Chairman Leahy had eight amendments, ex-comedian
Al Franken submitted 12,
Gangster Schumer presented five, and so on among the Democrat majority.
The Republicans, conversely, had a number of diverse amendments.
Celebrated newbie conservative
Ted Cruz of Texas wrote just five, and kept a mostly low profile in the hearing even when he showed up. He did pipe up to chastise the bill for
making the illegal immigration problem worse by having no real enforcement. But he enthusiastically entered an amendment to
increase H-1b tech visas by 500 percent, from 65,000 now to 325,000, which surely made Facebook founder (and
cheap-labor abuser) Mark
Zuckerberg smile. (Zuck needs to pinch pennies to keep up his
$7-million Palo Alto house after he lost $4 billion in net worth due to the
IPO flop of FB.)
It must be said that Senator Chuck Grassley was the other champion of law and sovereignty in the hearing, with a remarkable 77 amendments. His style is somewhat more low-key than Sessions, but he was memorably clear about his position as a
repentant 1986 amnesty supporter in his
May 21 closing statement:
Coming into the debate, my position was clear. I voted for amnesty for 3 million people in 1986, and it didn’t solve the problem. And, today, we’re right back at the same place, talking about the same problems, and proposing the same solutions.
(Grassley should get a
psychology merit badge for his lucid explanation of
behavioral principles in legislation: "You know what I found out? If you reward illegality, you get more of it.")
Sessions had fewer amendments (49), and they focused on protecting American
workers,
taxpayers, border
security and
public safety.
Following are a few Sessions amendments presented in normal English, just to give a hint how broadly the bill affects America and what must be done to fix it:
- Sessions 3: To prohibit the issuance of low-skilled guest worker visas if the unemployment rate is 5 percent or more. (BAG13295)
- Sessions 5: To provide criminal penalties for overstaying a visa. (BAG13293)
- Sessions 7: To provide sanctions for countries that delay or prevent repatriation of their citizens and nationals. (EAS13357)
- Sessions 9: To require the completion of the 700 miles of reinforced fencing as required by section 102(b)(1)(A) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of 1996 (as amended) as a trigger. …
- Sessions 13: To require aliens who may be a threat to national security to submit to an in person interview with a consular officer when applying for a visa. (EAS13330)
- Sessions 14: To provide for the denial of benefits and removal of terrorist aliens. (ARM13591)
- Sessions 17: To ensure that granting of registered provisional immigrant status does not result in the admission of immigrants likely to become public charges. (ARM13553)
- Sessions 22: To prohibit those who have a criminal record from being eligible for registered provisional immigrant status. (EAS13343)
- Sessions 24: To strike the provision that authorizes the Secretary to permit aliens previously deported and who are outside the U.S., or have illegally reentered the country, to apply for registered provisional immigrant status. (MDM13373)
[
Democrats Shoot Down Immigration Reforms In Senate, by John Hinderaker,
Powerline, May 9, 2013
Wonky stuff, to be sure. But it’s
what goes on in the battle to save the country. Only five of the Sessions amendments were passed—none important to enforcement, needless to say.
Naturally, the tireless defense of American sovereignty cannot go unpunished by the
Cultural Marxist MSM. In elite newsrooms, scribblers side with job-stealing immigrants and illegals and against unemployed American.
Washington Post columnist
Dana Milbank [
Message him on Twitter] compared Sessions to a famous liberal bogeyman:
Not since George Wallace, perhaps, has an Alabamian taken as passionate a stand for a lost cause as the one Jeff Sessions is taking now.
Bipartisan immigration legislation is making its way inexorably through the Senate Judiciary Committee. Although its ultimate fate is unclear, its passage by the committee is assured, and conservatives on the panel such as ranking Republican Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (Utah) are doing what they can to improve the bill. Even firebrands such as Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Mike Lee (Utah) are holding fire.
Then there’s Sessions. The wiry Southerner is on a one-man crusade to undo the compromise drafted by the Gang of Eight (four of whom, two Democrats and two Republicans, are colleagues on the committee).
He has dominated the four days of hearings to “mark up” the bill. As of midday Monday, he had spoken for two hours and 56 minutes — far longer than the second-place Grassley (2:24) and third-place Chuck Schumer of New York (1:38). [. . .]
On immigration, Sen. Jeff Sessions tries to halt the inevitable, by Dana Milbank, Washington Post, May 20, 2013
In Milbank’s loaded liberal language, the “petulant Alabamian” “complained,” “muttered” and “demanded.”
According to Milbank, even the Republican “firebrands” are restraining themselves for the greater comity, but the
knuckle-dragger from the racist Deep South is a
purveyor of hate against little brown people who just want to come out of the shadows for a better life.
But,
as usual, many
WaPo commenters weren’t buying this liberal trash talk, even though Post posters tend to lean left. A good showing in that tough room suggests Jeff Sessions is being successful in his campaign to educate the public on
how bad S.744 really is.
It must be said that, CNN, normally a proponent of open borders, presented Senator Sessions in a more positive light, portraying him as friendly to concerns of citizen workers. CNN hasn’t been so friendly to immigration law enforcement since it
chased off Lou Dobbs.
Specifically, he argued that in granting work authorization for millions of undocumented men and women over the next decade and beyond, the bill will benefit corporate titans by flooding the labor market and holding down stagnant salaries in an already weak economy.
In short, it will lead to disaster for those Americans now clinging to the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
It's a populist argument not often heard in the higher echelons of today's GOP.
"My Republican colleagues seem to be oblivious to the free market," Sessions said. [. . .]
Sessions takes on Senate immigration gang, vows to 'expose' flawed bill, by Alan Silverleib, CNN May 21, 2013
It’s very tough to fight against the business, ethnic and media forces that push the
Treason Lobby agenda. Nevertheless, Senator Sessions is succeeding in getting his message across in the old-fashioned way—calmly explaining the truth.
The
Eight Gangsters had the field to themselves as they wrote the bill in secret, while
promising a balance of enforcement along with rewards for lawbreakers.
Now the job of every concerned American is to reveal the lies hidden within the bill’s size and deliberately obscure structure.
Jeff Sessions
is showing the way.
Brenda Walker lives in northern California and blogs about immigration and culture in LimitsToGrowth.org. http://www.limitstogrowth.org/
A very interesting post from www.Vdare.com about Jeff Sessions analyzing S.744 and the Corker-Hoeven Amendment. This follows this post about an English language amendment to S.744. This follows this post about the release of illegal immigrant felons from prison by ICE. This follows this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what is happening in the nation now click here and you can read the two very interesting books that are shown HERE.
Senator Jeff Sessions has a long and illustrious history of detecting loopholes in amnesty bills and explaining away the falsehoods which are made to sound so appealing to the gullible press. Republican Senators are supposed to rubber stamp the upbeat talking points and not vote on the text of the bill.
