Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has filed for cloture on S. 1348. A vote on the “Grand Bargain” amnesty bill may occur on Thursday, June 7.

Please call your Senators and put them on notice that a vote in favor of cloture will be viewed (and graded by Americans for Better Immigration) as a vote in favor of amnesty.

HOW DOES S. 1348 ATTEMPT TO TRICK THE AMERICAN PEOPLE? SEN. SESSIONS EXPLAINS: (Click here for full text):

“It is clear the people who drafted this legislation had an agenda and the agenda was not to meet the expectations of the American people.

“The agenda was to create a facade and appearance of enforcement, an appearance of toughness in some instances.

“When you get into the meat of the provisions and get into the bill and study it, tucked away here and there are laws that eviscerate and eliminate the real effectiveness of those provisions. It was carefully done and deliberately done. This is a bill that should not become law.

“It is a bill that will come back to be an embarrassment to our Members who have supported it. I wish it were not so. I know how these things happen. You do not always have time to do everything you want to do. You try to do something you think is right, but ultimately in a bill as important as this one that has tremendous impact on the future of our country and our legal system and our commitment to the rule of law, we ought to get it right. We ought not to let this one slide by. It is not acceptable to say, let’s just pass something and we will send it to the House and maybe the House of Representatives will stand up and stop it and fix it. That is not acceptable for the great Senate of the United States.”

——Sen. Jeff Sessions, Senate Floor, May 23, 2007 FOUR FAILURES OF S. 1348

These Failures in the Bill Ensure that Illegal Immigration Will Continue After the Amnesty Failure #1: BUSH/KENNEDY BILL DOES NOT REQUIRE EXIT SYSTEM TO ENSURE AGAINST ‘OVERSTAYED’ ILLEGAL ALIENS IN FUTURE An estimated 40 percent of all illegal aliens came to this country legally on temporary visas as students, tourists and workers.

S. 1348 leaves out a requirement that a computerized exit system be in place and working before any new immigration programs can begin. This ensures that if this bill passes, we will continue to have hundreds of thousands of legal visitors becoming illegal aliens each year.

Failure #2: NO MONEY FOR ENFORCEMENT 9/11 Families for Secure America noted that Congress has been passing all kinds of enforcement measures through the years that never got implemented because the White House refuses to ask for funding and because the Congress routinely short-changes them.

Without appropriations, none of the talk about increased enforcement means much—particularly when based on the track record of the last three administrations (including Bush 1) of ignoring immigration laws.

Failure #3: AMNESTY HAPPENS BEFORE ENFORCEMENT Of course, the White House says this is not true. They point out that the part of the amnesty that puts illegal aliens on the path to green cards and citizenship doesn’t start until the enforcement triggers are met. The triggers must be met before the Z-visas are given out to illegal aliens.

But the big hole in that argument is that illegal aliens get their legal status long before the Z-visas. They get their “probationary” legal status, including a work permit and social security number, at the very beginning after the bill passes. If the Z-visas are never offered (because the enforcement triggers aren’t met), the bill would allow the now-legal aliens to work and live in the U.S. the rest of their lives under the probationary status.

Failure #4: ENFORCEMENT TRIGGERS ARE ABOUT PROCEDURE BUT NOT ABOUT RESULTS The triggers can be met without any reduction in future illegal immigration at all.

The triggers do NOT require that DHS has operational control of the border; ….. they do NOT require that DHS comply with the law and build all of the fence; ….. they do NOT require that DHS implement the exit system that would allow us to know if “guest workers” actually leave, even though it has been in the law since 1996; ….. they do NOT require work site enforcement; ….. and they do NOT require that DHS increase its apprehension rate or its alien absconder removal rate.

(Read Rosemary’s short summary of S. 1348.) (For a great analysis of the weakness of these triggers, be sure to read Sen. Grassley’s “Trigger” floor speech.)