Senate Limits Immigration To 9 Million Over 20 Years

On the downside, they voted against sealing the border first before "reforming" immigration:

The Senate yesterday voted against securing the border before implementing provisions that would grant the right of citizenship to millions of illegal aliens and that would double the flow of legal immigration.

The amendment would have delayed the "amnesty" and guest-worker provisions in the Senate's comprehensive immigration-reform bill until the border had been sewn up successfully. The majority of Democrats, 36 of 44, were joined by 18 Republicans and the chamber's lone independent to kill the amendment on an 55-40 vote.

But this should hearten conservative sovereignists. Even Politpundit:

But those favoring tougher immigration restrictions were not completely without victories yesterday.

The guest-worker program -- which had been estimated to bring in more than 130 million new workers and family members over the next 20 years -- was scaled back severely last night. The Senate approved an amendment, which Capitol Hill Republicans said the White House had lobbied against, to cap the guest-worker program at 200,000 new workers each year.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, who has led the effort to reveal the numerical consequences of the Senate bill, hailed last night's action and said it would reduce the final number of guest workers and family members to fewer than 9 million over the next two decades.

"This amendment represented a massive victory over the open-borders lobby," he said after the overwhelming vote to approve the amendment. "It fundamentally changed the low-skill foreign-worker caps under the Senate bill by doing two things -- reducing the annual low-skill foreign-worker cap from 325,000 to 200,000 per year and eliminating the automatic 20 percent increase to the cap that could have occurred annually."

Earlier this week, The Washington Times reported that the Senate bill would have more than doubled the annual flow of legal immigration into the country. Yesterday, The Times reported that two separate analyses -- one by Mr. Sessions, the other by the Heritage Foundation --. estimated that the bill overall ultimately could bring in as many as 193 million new legal immigrants over the next 20 years.

posted by Ace at 11:49 AM

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