Tom Tancredo, the leading anti-immigrant member of the House of Representatives introduced his BE REAL Act today. A quick review of the bill leads to the quick conclusion that it has no chance of passing. The bill would kill the tourism industry in this country by scrapping the visa waiver program. It would end the H-1B visa and replace it with a labor certification program that would be unworkable. It gives the EPA an unworkable mandate to report on whether immigrants harm the US environment. Don't expect any support from Democrats, the President or mainstream Republicans.


TITLE I: BORDER ENFORCEMENT

Subtitle A : Improving Homeland Security

Authorizes additional Border Patrol agents, BCBP immigration inspectors, BICE immigration special agents, and detention and removal officers, as well as additional detention facilities.
Suspends visa waiver program until DHS certifies to Congress that:
- automated entry-exit system is fully implemented and
functional
- all ports of entry have functional biometric machine readers
- all participating countries issue machine-readable, biometric
passports
Increases the civil and criminal penalties for document fraud and false claims of citizenship, as well as overstaying a visa by 30 days or more.
Clarifies that DHS officers may not engage in racial profiling, but may consider factors such as mannerisms, appearance, language, behavior and location
Subtitle B : Removing the Incentives to Illegal Migration
Requires the Secretary of DHS to create a national, mandatory electronic employment eligibility verification system; requires that the system provide verification or a tentative non-verification of work eligibility within three days of the initial inquiry and, in the case of a non-verification the employee is terminated upon confirmation of verification; requires that the system include safeguards against its use resulting in unlawful discriminatory practices; exempts employers from civil and criminal liability for actions taken in good faith reliance on the verification system
Permits employers who seek verification of work eligibility of new hires within three days after they begin work to use such verification as a defense against employer sanctions; requires employers to obtain from each new hire either a social security number or an alien number
TITLE II : REVOLVING EMPLOYMENT TO ASSIST LABORERS

Subtitle A : Prerequisites to Guest Worker Program

Requires the Secretary of DHS, prior to the implementation of the guest worker program, to certify to Congress that the entry-exit system is fully implemented and functional; the electronic employment verification system described in Subtitle B of Title I of this Act is fully implemented and functional; 20,000 full-time border enforcement personnel are in the field; BICE employees respond to every request by state and local law enforcement officers to pick up illegal aliens
Requires the EPA to conduct an environmental impact statement and certify that neither current levels of illegal immigration nor the guest worker program included in this Act will adversely impact the human environment in the United States
Subtitle B: The Guest Worker Program
Replaces all current H nonimmigrant visas with a single H nonimmigrant visa for aliens coming to the United States temporarily to perform skilled or unskilled work for which no Americans or legal permanent residents are available or qualified.
Requires that the Department of Labor create an Internet-based job posting system to which all U.S. employment agencies and business may acquire password-protected access so that they can post available jobs on the system; prohibits the Labor Department from approving any labor certification applications in any industry and geographic region if the unemployment rate exceeds five percent and the percentage of new hires who are H non-immigrants exceeds 15 percent
For more information on this issue, please contact Carlos Espinosa at 202-225-7882.

In tonight's anti-immigrant rant, Lou Dobbs of CNN complains that illegal aliens are carrying all sorts of aweful diseases into this country. CNN uses the usual misleading statistics to make it sound like we're on the verge of catastrophe. Reporter Kitty Pilgrim notes that foreign-born people in this country are eight times more likely to test positive for TB. What she conveniently forgets to discuss is how many ACTUAL cases there are and whether we are really in any great danger. Eight times and extremely low number is still a low number.

Context CNN. It's your obligations to your viewers. And it is dishonest to advertise Lou Dobbs' show as a news show when it is clearly an opinion show.

One of the less appalling Dobbs features on immigration tonight. The focus was on illegal immigration and Dobbs had two guests - the pro and the con. Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies represented the con side and Frank Sharry represented the pro side. Frank ably represented the pro-immigrant view despite very one-sided questioning from Dobbs. On the fact checking front, Dobbs made the statement "Our prisons are, by most estimates, costing $1.5 billion because of the large illegal alien population within them" to open the segment. As usual, no source was offered for a fairly serious accustaion.

I do want to congratulate Julian Sanchez for finally taking on Dobbs in print. For an interesting challenge to Dobbs, go to http://www.reason.com/links/links103003.shtml.

Just happened to tune in to the nightly anti-immigrant tirade on Lou Dobbs Tonight. The report was basically a rehashing of the same story that has been run multiple times on the show in the last few months - H-1B and L-1s are taking jobs from American workers. Of course, rather than actually presenting facts and figures to document this, the reporter, Bill Tucker, asserted that this was true and simply interviewed someone who claims she re-trained her immigrant replacement worker. Of course, no proof was actually presented that this actually occurred other than showing a photo of the the "replaced" worker with someone with dark skin.

The report noted that H-1Bs are working in areas other than high tech. Of course, none of the fields with severe shortages were mentioned - school teachers, physicians, nurses. You'll never hear Dobbs or his correspondents admit that an H-1B ever provided a benefit to the public. Ever. In fact, not one story that I have ever seen broadcast on this show about immigration - and immigration is covered nearly every night on this show, has made a positive comment about immigration. Amazing for a network that makes fun of its competitor network's slogan of being "fair and balanced."

Later in the broadcast, Dobbs interviewed Dick Gephart and presented an outrageous claim that America's population would grow to a billion by the end of the century if immigration was not checked. Where did that figure come from? Citations to actual facts seem to be conveniently left out reports on this show.

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