9 Big Gains Make Next Senate Far More Pro-Enforcement & Anti-Amnesty

An interesting post from www.NumbersUSA.com about the new Senate. This follows this post  about replacing Nancy Pelosi due to her amnesty bill and this post  which shows that there are 30,000 openly illegal immigrants in the border town of El Paso. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE!

9 Big Gains Make Next Senate Far More Pro-Enforcement & Anti-Amnesty



By Roy Beck - posted on NumbersUSA



A lot of the news media have fallen for an open-borders advocacy argument that the survival of Senators Reid (Nevada) and Bennet (Colo.) shows that politicians are wise to take a pro-amnesty stance.



Some gullible reporters may believe it, but I can't imagine that the open-borders people see anything different from what we see: Voters last Tuesday elected 8 new Senators who are dramatically different from the ones currently holding those seats -- who will move the Senate away from Harry Reid's immigration ideas and strongly toward Sen. Jeff Sessions' (Ala.) ideas.



4 PRO-ENFORCEMENT REPUBLICANS REPLACE 4 PRO-AMNESTY DEMOCRATS



These are the most obvious victories for the Less Immigration movement.





GONE: Blanche Lincoln •Arkansas -- Have we ever elected anybody to the Senate more fired up with a better record on immigration than John Boozman, who defeated incumbent Blanche Lincoln (a Recent Immigration-Reduction grade of "D" and a Career Amnesty grade of "F").













ELECTED: John Boozman Since he arrived in the U.S. House in 2001, BOOZMAN has racked up an "A" grade, and "A+" during the last four years. He has proactively pushed bills in nearly every category. He was one of our elite "5 for 5" Members who co-sponsored all five of the Great Immigration Bills we pushed the last two years. And he is a TRUE REFORMER candidate, having taken our survey and pledged to support all 12 of our top immigration policy priorities. Can you spell ch-ch-CHANGE?













GONE: Roland Burris •Illinois -- This change is not so much who is arriving as who won't be filling this seat. This is the seat that Barack Obama occupied for four years adhering strictly to an open-borders agenda. His replacement, Sen. Burris, has earned an "F-minus" while voting for enforcement and immigration reduction exactly 0% of the time.



ELECTED: Mark Kirk Instead of electing yet another mass-immigration champion, Illinois voters chose Rep. MARK KIRK who is not our champion but has at least earned Recent grade of "B" the last four years. He will need a lot of constituency pressure to make him truly helpful to us, but we can be sure that he won't be joining surviving Senators Reid and Bennet in a pro-amnesty march.













GONE: Arlen Specter •Pennsylvania -- Occupying the seat now -- as he has since 1981 -- is Arlen Specter who has been our opponent usually as a Republican and recently as a Democrat. We will have to contend with his "D" behavior no more. That was assured when he lost the Democratic primary this year. But the man who defeated him -- Rep. Sestak -- brought a "D+" record to the election.



ELECTED: Pat Toomey Voters last Tuesday chose Pat Toomey who earned a "B" while in the U.S. House in an earlier period. Our candidate analysis shows Toomey to be fantastic on fighting illegal immigration but largely silent on the need to reduce legal immigration, too. He, too, will benefit from a lot of constituency efforts.

















GONE: Russ Feingold •Wisconsin -- Can you imagine Wisconsin having a Senator who would oppose amnesty, support attrition through enforcement and mandatory E-Verify to cause illegal aliens to go back home? I'll admit that I didn't think it was possible any time soon. But voters elected just that kind of Senator last week in political newcomer and businessman RON JOHNSON.



ELECTED: Ron Johnson Johnson will be replacing one of the best friends illegal workers and their employers ever had, Sen. Russ Feingold. What an improvement the Senate will be without his "F-minus" open-borders behavior.



















4 BAD OR WEAK REPUBLICANS ARE REPLACED BY 4 STRONG PRO-ENFORCEMENT REPUBLICANS



While the media have focused on the Republicans who took Democratic seats, the biggest improvement in the Senate may come from 4 current Republican Senators who are being replaced by 4 Republicans who enormously better on immigration issues.





GONE: Mel Martinez •Florida -- Although there has been a caretaker in this seat, it belonged to Sen. Mel Martinez who was one of John McCain's pro-Amnesty brigade. For a short time, he was head of the Republican National Committee and tried to use that position to further his crusade for more foreign workers and rewards for illegal aliens,.



ELECTED: Marco Rubio While Martinez sought to win Hispanic votes by supporting illegal immigration, voters last week chose a very different kind of Hispanic candidate in MARCO RUBIO. Although Rubio provided little help to our allies when he was in the state legislature, he decided from the beginning of the campaign to run as the opposite of Martinez and promised to do just about everything we could want on illegal immigration. His Hispanic concerns were much less for illegal-alien Hispanics and much more for Hispanic Americans who are suffering incredibly high unemployment. It will be much more difficult for Sen. Menendez (New Jersey) to demagogue and accuse pro-enforcement forces of being anti-Hispanic while another Hispanic Sen. Rubio is leading the charge for enforcement. Delicious.





GONE: Sam Brownback •Kansas -- As in nearby Arkansas, the change in this Senate seat could not be much more extreme. The winner -- Rep. MORAN -- is a TRUE REFORMER. He took our survey and promised to work in the Senate for all 12 of our top immigration policy priorities (both legal and illegal immigration reductions). He earned an "A" for his immigration-reduction work in this Congress.



ELECTED: Jerry Moran The Republican he replaces is Sen. Sam Brownback who holds a special place in the NumbersUSA hall of shame for his leadership in 1996 in narrowly defeating Rep. Lamar Smith's legislation to require mandatory verification to keep illegal aliens out of jobs and to eliminate the visa lottery and chain migration. When Brownback moved to the Senate in 1997, he became allies with Republican Sen. Abraham of Michigan who had led the killing of the same legislation in the Senate. Brownback was an out-spoken member of John McCain's amnesty brigade until at the last minute in June of 2007 -- thinking about his plans to eventually run for governor -- he voted to kill the Bush-Kennedy-McCain amnesty. Since then he has operated at a "C" level, working about half of his time to reward illegal aliens.





GONE: Kit Bond •Missouri -- Wedged between Kansas and Arkansas, this is the third state that is sending a TRUE REFORMER to the Senate. REP. ROY BLUNT has pledged to work for all 12 of our top immigration priorities. As House Majority Leader in December 2005, Rep. Blunt helped push through the passage of a powerful enforcement bill (that Senate Republican leaders unfortunately refused to take up in 2006).



ELECTED: Roy Blunt The man in this Missouri seat at that time -- and right now -- provided no leadership in 2006 to move enforcement in the Senate. Sen. Kit Bond isn't all that bad on immigration, but he's never had his heart in fighting illegal immigration or in reducing legal immigration. During his long career, he has earned only a C+ and has never shown any leadership on protecting U.S. workers and communities from indiscriminate immigration. Blunt promises to be a very different kind of Senator, having served in the leadership in the U.S. House for many years. During that time, the House Republican leadership became a great friend of working Americans by fighting for tougher enforcement against illegal foreign workers and the companies that hire them. But the Republican leadership in the Senate represented the Chamber of Commerce and instead pushed for amnesty. The election of Blunt and the others noted in this blog represent an important shift in which the Senate Republicans finally start acting like the House Republicans on immigration.





GONE: Robert Bennett •Utah -- The current Senator Bob Bennett has a "C-minus" Immigration-Reduction grade over his career and has always been an amnesty champion. He led a campaign of retribution against immigration-reduction groups soon after Republican Sen. Abraham (Mich.) lost his seat in 2000, in part due to his open-borders leadership. NumbersUSA and other groups had heavily advertised in Michigan, informing citizens of Abraham's open-borders work. Bennett did a pretty effective job for awhile in keeping all Republican Senators from talking with our reduction groups. He also spread the "hate group" lies of the Southern Poverty Law Center. On the issue of immigration, we were thrilled to see him defeated in the Utah Republican convention earlier this year.



ELECTED: Mike Lee The man who retired Sen. Bennett at the convention and who won the seat Tuesday is MIKE LEE. He wasn't the strongest reduction candidate at the convention, but he definitely made it clear that he would have a different approach from Bennett. He has promised to oppose amnesty and to support attrition through enforcement, mandatory E-Verify and an end to birthright citizenship for illegal aliens.











WHO IS THE 9TH? McCain Replaced McCain



I said at the top that there were 9 big gains in the Senate for our side in this election.



The ninth one may be stretching it a little, but I think you will appreciate my reasoning.





GONE: John McCain No Republican has been more destructive in immigration policy the last five years than John McCain. His run for the Presidency in 2008 moderated him quite a bit, but Pres. Obama and the open-borders groups really expected he would assist Obama in this Congress to move McCain's old "comprehensive immigration reform" policies forward.





ELECTED: John McCain The problem was that former congressman J.D. Hayworth signaled early that he would probably challenge McCain primarily on immigration. Hayworth slammed McCain with all of his bad deeds of the past. In the process, McCain made promises that even he may find difficult to break for some years to come. The "F" McCain of old has been replaced by the McCain who was re-elected Tuesday with promises that make him at least a "B" Senator on our issues. Without McCain's leadership and with Specter, Martinez, Brownback and Bennett now gone, his old Republican Amnesty Brigade just may fall apart.



There are six other Senate seats that will have new occupants in 2011 and who could be different from the present occupants. But the differences do not look likely to be large.



I will write about them at another time. Some new Senators could be better on immigration than the people they replace. And some could be worse. But none seem to be a lot different from the present occupant. And the overall effect of these six appears likely to be a wash. The 6 Senate seats to which I refer are in Indiana, Kentucky, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio and West Virginia.



When you look at the cumulative effect of the 9 states and new Senators featured in this blog , you can see why the open-borders groups have been trying to misdirect the media's attention to Nevada and Colorado -- two seats we would have loved to have flipped to pro-enforcement Senators but which will be no worse in 2011 than they are now.



ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA



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