I switched on the computer this morning intending to spend a few hours doing some business-related work (All VDARE.com writers have to do something else for a living). But I consoled myself by reading Joe Guzzardi’s blog, and quickly realized that it may be the most important item the VDARE.com blog has ever carried.

Joe draws attention to yesterday’s speech on the Senate floor by Senator Sessions of Alabama. It is a remarkable document (and Joe has appended it to his comment). Sessions, and his staff - to whom he gives credit - really understand this issue (and I speak as a hardened veteran of the Immigration Policy Wars). Every immigration skeptic will learn something by reading it, particularly of course about the current bill.

In particular, Sessions has grasped a great truth: the “Temporary Guest Worker” concept as the bill designs it is an utter fraud.

Under this bill, under that rubric of big print language, “Nonimmigrant Visa Reform, Subsection A, Temporary Guest Workers’’–what it really says is if you come into this country under this work visa you get to convert your status to a green card holder–a legal permanent resident that can then become a citizen. Somebody said last night: Why are people afraid to discuss this issue? I say to the supporters of the bill: Why are you afraid to tell the truth about your bill? Why do you title the section one thing and then write it to actually do another?

Why are you putting in here “temporary guest workers’’ when there is nothing “temporary’’ or “guest’’ about them. Why? Are they afraid the American people will find out what is really in that provision which would have brought in, had it not been amended by Senator Bingaman, perhaps 130 million new people into the country permanently? What kind of temporary program is that?

How does it work? This is the way it works: You come in, get a job; you come in under this guest worker proposal, and within the first day you arrive, your employer can seek a green card for you. If you qualify–and most will–then that green card will be issued, and you are then a legal permanent resident. You are a legal permanent resident within weeks or months of entry into the country, and within 5 years of being a legal permanent resident and having a green card, you can apply for citizenship. If you know a little English and don’t get arrested and convicted of a felony, you will be made a citizen by right under that provision. So it is not a temporary guest worker program. We need one in the bill. It is not there

There is a great deal more which deserves publicity. I note in particular that Sessions is aware that the conventional estimate of the number of illegals present in America could quite easily be too low:

I am not talking about the other 11 to 20 million illegal aliens who may claim amnesty under this bill.

Pro- Amnesty forces prefer to use the lower number, but it is questionable. AND WE SHOULD KNOW BEFORE OFFERING AMNESTY!

The Senate is writing a blank check, drawn on the American people.

He also seems to understand the political dynamic at work here:

In fact, if you read the bill, you will discover there has been a studied and carefully carried out plan to conceal how many people will come in under the temporary guest worker programs when, in fact, what they mislabel as a temporary program is in fact a permanent worker program that leads on a direct path to citizenship in fairly short order. …

We have an agreement here struck between the Chamber of Commerce and some political activist groups to move this bill through, and they are not concerned sufficiently about the interests of decent American citizens who may not have the highest skills..

In terms of lawfulness, decency, morality, and the national interest, the American people are head and shoulders above the Members of Congress who are asserting and pushing this flawed legislation. A huge majority of the American people have been right on this issue for decades. It is the executive branch and the Congress that have been derelict in their most solemn duties. If the American people had been listened to and not been stiff-armed by an arrogant elitist bureaucracy and political class, we wouldn’t have 11 million to 20 million people in our country illegally today.

Up until now, the supineness of the Senate has been appalling. But terrible times bring forward great men, sometimes from humiliating obscurity.

Who knows?

Not long ago, the United Nations established a new Human Rights Council “over objections from the United States that the resolution did not go far enough to exclude some of the world’s worst human rights abusers from membership in the new body.” (UN Press Release)

Of course we were right–Cuba is a member for crying outloud.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when the UN elected the country of Mexico as Chairman of the new Human Rights Council (UNHRC).

Mexico is a third world nation in which living conditions are so bad that millions of their people have walked across miles of desert in 100-plus degree heat just hoping for a job picking lettuce in another country.

It even has a name: The Mexodus

Their criminal justice system is a wretched world where cops rape women and extort money from tourists at gunpoint but also refuses to extradite those who have committed murder in another country.

Slave trade and forced prostitution are as common in Mexico as Little League and Girl Scouts are in other countries.

Access to education is virtually non-existent, medical care is available only for the wealthy and drug lords enjoy the type of deference normally reserved for clergy.

According to the text of the new UN resolution which established the council,

“Members elected to the Council shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights, fully cooperate with the Council and be reviewed under the universal periodic review mechanism during their term of membership”.

Cuba and Mexico upholding high standards in protecting human rights?

Sheesh…pretty soon they’ll be telling us that Libya isn’t a terrorist nation! Oh wait…they did that last week.

I suppose some memories are stronger than others but this family remembers PAN AM 103 very, very well.

Read the comments made on the Senate floor May 19th by Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions : he charges that his colleagues had a “studied and carefully carried out a plan to conceal” the fact that S. 2611 would bring more than 100 million “unskilled workers” to America in the next two decades.

According to Sessions, “only three or four Senators” showed up for the single hearing allowed to discuss the population and wage impact of S. 2611.

Sessions wonders why the urgency to push S. 2611 through while limiting debate.

Then he answers his own question: he reveals that the Senators are saying among themselves that the important thing is to get a quick vote on S.2611, get it off the table, and let the House of Representatives bail them out by blocking it.

The entire Sessions speech is here.

UPDATE: Since the search link to Sessions’ speech may expire, due to the THOMAS system, I’ve put the whole speech below.

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