Date: Wednesday 19 OCT05 11:15 p.m.

In this email:
1. The Specter/Kennedy plan to offset the budget deficit by selling American professional jobs to foreign workers
2. Call these Senators at this phone number
3. What to say on the phone
4. The CQ Today article explaining the Specter/Kennedy sell-out of American workers
5. NumbersUSA analysis of specifics of the Specter/Kennedy plan
actions in brief:
Phone Senate Judiciary Members ... Tell them to block plans to pay for the budget deficit by giving away American professional jobs to foreign workers.

Phone NOW to stop Specter/Kennedy on Thursday from importing 100s of thousands more skilled workers

More American jobs jobs are in danger.

Senate committee is poised to act Thursday to OK hundreds of thousands of additional high-skilled foreign workers to compete with our students and our experience American workers.

I'm sending this to those of you who live in a state with a Senator on the Judiciary Committee.

If you have never called a Senate office, this is the time to start. (See directions below on who to call and what to say.)

CLICK HERE ( http://www.numbersusa.com/phones?ID=4114 ) to see the special phone-request page with a place for you to provide us some feedback on your calls.

1. The Spectre/Kennedy plan to offset the budget deficit by selling American professional jobs to foreign workers

Senate Judiciary Chairman Specter (R-PA) and Sen. Kennedy (D-MA) plan to push a draconian idea through committee on Thursday. It is so callous that you may have difficulty believing it is true.

Because of the profligate spending by Congress and the President in recent years, each congressional committee is now charged with coming up with big spending cuts or big revenue increases.

Specter and Kennedy have decided to balance their part of the budget mess on the backs of unemployed and underemployed high-tech and other professional workers -- and on the backs of American students who are currently studying to enter those occupations.

The plan by Specter and Kennedy is to sell hundreds of thousands of American professional jobs over the next several years to foreign workers -- or more precisely, to sell them to corporations which will then be allowed to import foreign workers instead of having to hire Americans.

I'll be more specific below, but let's get on to your action.

2. Call these Senators at this phone number

It is still possible to shame -- and even scare -- a U.S. Senator.

Call one or more of the Senators who serve on the Judicary Committee.

Let them know that you know of this incredible sell-out of American professionals that is being contemplated. Senators who are our allies may be spurred to heroic action to stop their colleagues from this treachery. And weak-kneed Senators facing elections next year may be frightened away from Specter and Kennedy's sell-out of American workers.

Do not assume that somebody else will make this call for you. Now is the time to start making your voice heard.

Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard and ask for the Senator you are trying to reach. Call:

202-224-3121

If the Senator is from your state, you can get the direct line by clicking on:
NumbersUSA.com/myMembers

See our full Congress directory to pick up all other direct numbers.

================
REPUBLICANS
================
Arlen Specter, CHAIRMAN, PENNSYLVANIA
Orrin G. Hatch, UTAH
Charles E. Grassley, IOWA
Jon Kyl, ARIZONA
Mike DeWine, OHIO
Jeff Sessions, ALABAMA
Lindsey Graham, SOUTH CAROLINA
John Cornyn, TEXAS
Sam Brownback, KANSAS
Tom Coburn, OKLAHOMA

==================
DEMOCRATS
==================
Patrick J. Leahy, RANKING DEMOCRATIC MEMBER, VERMONT
Edward M. Kennedy, MASSACHUSETTS
Joseph R. Biden, Jr., DELAWARE
Herbert Kohl, WISCONSIN
Dianne Feinstein, CALIFORNIA
Russell D. Feingold, WISCONSIN
Charles E. Schumer, NEW YORK
Richard J. Durbin, ILLINOIS

It is especially important that you call the Senator from your own state.

3. What to say on the phone

Be polite but don't hold back your personal dismay about the Specter/Kennedy proposal.

1. Tell the staffer who answers that you are calling about the Specter/Kennedy proposal to sell massive new amounts of foreign-worker green cards and work visas to corporations in order to reduce budget deficits.

2. Give your reason why you believe that adding still more foreign workers to this country will harm American professionals and discourage American kids from entering these professions. GIVE YOUR PERSONAL CONNECTION TO THIS ISSUE.

3. The staffers will tend to react in disbelief or try to argue that there is no such proposal before the Committee. You should be prepared to cite the CQ Today article below (which comes from the highly respected Congressional Quarterly news operation).

4. Finish with a succinct statement such as: I oppose any action that increases green cards or visas for foreign workers. Give American workers a chance. Reduce ALL immigration.

5. You may want to suggest that the Senate committee meet its budget goals in the same way that House Judiciary Chairman Sensenbrenner has proposed by increasing the fees on the existing number of allowed visas. You will see that proposal highlighted in the CQ Today story below.

4. The CQ Today article explaining the Specter/Kennedy sell-out of American workers

CQ TODAY

Judiciary Committees Offer Dueling Proposals on Charges for Visas for Savings Targets

By Michael Sandler, CQ Staff

The House and Senate Judiciary committees hope to meet their relatively small mandatory savings targets by charging fees for visa programs that benefit businesses.

However, their initiatives differ enough to have the business community favor one and oppose the other.

The two committees must produce $300 million in savings over the next five years, a tiny fraction of the $34.7 billion in overall reductions called for in the budget resolution (H Con Res 95).

House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., has proposed requiring U.S companies with international operations to pay $1,500 every time one seeks a visa for the temporary transfer to the United States of a senior executive, manager or an employee with specialized knowledge.

The bill (HR 3648), which would tack the fee onto the non-immigrant L-1 visa, would raise more than the $60 million a year sought by the budget. The committee approved the bill, 20-6, on Sept. 29.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes the bill, saying the fees could reach $150 million a year.

That may be important for Sensenbrenner, should House leadership demand that he and other committee chairmen find additional revenue or make deeper cuts to bolster the budget.

Foreign Executives

The proposed fees would apply only to a company's foreign executives and other employees, not to family members accompanying them to the United States or following them later. The legislation would prohibit employers from passing on the fee to the individuals receiving the visas.

The business community favors an alternative proposal by Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

Specter's plan, not yet introduced as legislation, would allow the federal government to go back to October 1991 and recapture all unused H-1B visas ­ issued for specialty occupations that require a bachelor's degree or the equivalent.

Those visas would be re-issued and assessed a $500 fee. The estimated 60,000 unclaimed visas issued each year would generate $30 million a year, or half the amount needed over the five-year budget reconciliation period.

The rest would come from reclaiming unused employment-based immigrant visas for professional workers, going back to 2001. A $500 fee would be added to all employment-based visas.

An aide to Specter said his draft will probably be marked up by the committee Oct. 20.

5. NumbersUSA analysis of specifics of the Specter/Kennedy plan

Your NumbersUSA Capitol Hill Team says that the Specter/Kennedy plan proposed for Thursday's vote would do the following:

1. It would raise the annual cap on permanent employment-based immigration by changing the formula as follows: employment-based visas = 140,000 + any unused family-based visas from the previous year + (the lesser of 90,000 or unused employment-based visas from any prior year).

2. It exempts the spouses and children of employment-based immigrants from counting against the numerical cap, beginning in 2004. (In 2003, workers got 36,210 visas, and their spouses and children got 45,927 visas. Total visas could have more than doubled under this bill.)

3. It adds a fee of $500 per petition for most employment-based visa petitions.

4. It allows alien spouses and children of citizens to adjust to Legal Permanent Resident status if the citizen abused them, died, or lost or renounced their citizenship; and it allows alien spouses and children of LPRs to adjust to LPR status if the LPR abused them or died.

5. Anytime the H-1B cap is reached, the lesser of 60,000 or any unused visas in any prior years are added to the cap.

This proposal follows an alarming pattern of Senators constantly using immigration to hammer American professionals in information-technology, health care, science and engineering. Last winter in an otherwise wonderful REAL ID bill, Sen. Hutchison (R-TX) blindsided all of us in a Joint Conference Committee by adding tens of thousands of permanent greencards for foreign nurses and other foreign professionals.

These actions usually are at the request of the all-powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce for whom greed has no limit.

Fortunately, the sell-out of American workers has been exposed before the deed this time.

But nothing will change. The sell-out will occur. Senators will be encouraged to continue to find creative ways to knock down American workers. ....

.....UNLESS ......

.....Unless you make that phone call TODAY.

Only when these Senators hear a wall of noise from American voters that they demand NO MORE INCREASES IN IMMIGRATION -- ONLY REDUCTIONS IN IMMIGRATION -- will they stop these every-few-months shenanigans.

-- ROY