Last week, 46 radio talk hosts and hundreds of their listeners descended on Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress against illegal-alien amnesty. The event is known as “Hold Their Feet To The Fire,” or HTFTTF, and was sponsored by FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
I started HTFTTF in January 1995, leading about 200 listeners (who paid their own way) to lobby Newt Gingrich and the new Republican House majority to not forget the promises of the “Contract With America,” to fulfill their pledges to balance the budget, reform welfare, etc.
Speaker Gingrich was so impressed by the sight of ordinary Americans paying their own way to come to D.C. in the dead of winter and asking nothing except that politicians keep their promises, that he allowed me to set up and broadcast from the basement of the Capitol building itself – the first radio talk host to do so.
And for awhile the budget was balanced, and welfare was reformed.
This decade, the focus of HTFTTF shifted to illegal immigration.
In 2007, the McCain-Kennedy immigration “reform” bill had the backing of the Democrats, the Republicans, and President Bush who told us “I’ll see you at the bill signing.” The advocates of open borders and illegal amnesty had the backing of the chamber of commerce and the AFL-CIO, both political parties, the media and the president – and they lost.
The amnesty bill was defeated because the American people would not tolerate rewarding law breakers, would not insult the efforts of legal immigrants who played by the rules and knew that illegals in this country increasingly compete for jobs with citizens and legal immigrants, driving down wages and the standard of living for every working American.
Half-hearted promises of border control or workplace enforcement would not obscure the fact that McCain-Kennedy was an immediate amnesty grant (the “Z” visa) with a devastating negative impact on jobs, schools, prisons and the social safety net.
The talk hosts and listeners who rallied in 2007 to clog the switchboard and e-mail boxes of Congress were the first “tea party” wave and all the “powers that (think they) be” could not prevail against a real “We the People” moment.
This year, HTFTTF started the week after the 9/12 rally in D.C. that saw up to 2 million Americans rally for the Constitution and the Republic – the largest demonstration in D.C. history and the most ignored demonstration in the history of the American media.
We also arrived in the week after the “You lie!” Joe Wilson outburst during the president’s speech to Congress – a speech in which the president did lie, claiming that illegals would not be covered in his health-insurance “reform.” The very wording of the House bill, or H.R. 3200, denying “eligibility credits” to illegals is contradicted in the same bill by a “non-discrimination” clause which prohibits requiring documentation of legal status.
Both the White House and Sen. Baucus retreated on this issue, admitted Joe Wilson’s point and produced stronger language which bars illegals more explicitly. By the end of last week, the president had to publicly fulfill my earlier prediction by stating that while illegals were out of the health “reform,” he wanted them in by making illegals legal in an amnesty bill.
Sen. Schumer, D-N.Y., also announced last week that an amnesty bill for illegals would be drafted and he would start hearings within one week.
The GAO also announced last week while we were in D.C. that the Mexican border fence was billions of dollars over budget and years behind. These same feds would be the ones running your health care under the “reform.”
Over budget, years behind? Another prediction fulfilled. Amnesty for illegals would have been immediate had McCain-Kennedy passed in 2007. Workplace enforcement and border control would fall behind. Gaps in the fence today in Arizona and Texas remarkably coincide with known drug smuggling roads guarded by cartel soldiers with automatic weapons not available in local American-side gun shows.
So HTFTTF was in D.C. at the very moment needed to wake up America to this new threat from the Obama administration and its congressional acolytes.
This is the truth: The Bush workplace raids revealed the truth that illegals are not here “doing work Americans just won’t do.” In food processing, manufacturing and even retail, raided work places quickly replaced deported illegal workers with Americans and legal immigrants, paying $2 to $4 more per hour – a win-win for everyone except the exploitive employer and the exploited illegal.
President Obama promised La Raza at their annual convention in San Diego last year that he would pass “comprehensive immigration reform” (using the McCain code words for amnesty) in 2009.
Obama aims to fulfill that promise. For the sake of American jobs, the American standard of living and the rule of law, We the People intend to defeat this bad idea again.
