House passes amnesty -- Senate votes Thurs morn‏

An interesting post from www.NumbersUSA.com aabout this week's DREAM ACT closure vote. This follows this previous post about it and this post which shows that there are 30,000 openly illegal immigrants in the border town of El Paso. On a related note, you can read about Miss Kentucky Latina here or an interesting article about Jessica Alba here. For more that you can do to get involved click  HERE!

House passes amnesty -- Senate votes Thurs morn‏


WE LOST IN THE HOUSE




Now We Have To Defeat DREAM Act Amnesty In The Senate Thursday Morning.



Start calling your own U.S. Senators at 8 Thursday morning until we announce the vote.



202-224-3121



We will be providing you faxes of thanks and disgust to send to your U.S. Representatives later to make sure they know that you were watching.



For now, though, focus your attention on the Senate.



You can find the Senate target list on our http://www.numbersusa.com/





The House vote at 9:01 p.m. EST tonight was 216-198 in passing the amnesty in the House.



But the amnesty won't actually happen if if the Senate fails to get 60 votes for cloture Thursday. We only have to win once to win the whole thing.





The Senate cloture vote is required to allow the debate to start on the amnesty. If it gets less than 60, the bill is dead.



If cloture DOES pass, there will be a debate on the bill and then another cloture vote in which we can again have a chance to kill the bill by keeping the vote below 60 (of the 100 Senators).

WE'LL WEBCAST SENATE VOTE AND OUR COMMENTARY LIVE



We invite you back into our conference room Thursday morning to watch the Senate vote with our NumbersUSA staff.



Note that the address is not dot com, but dot tv:



http://www.numbersusa.tv/



The Senate schedule states that the amnesty will be taken up after the Senate convenes at 9:30. That could easily change, but we'll be live then in case things start happening that early.



OUR LIVE WEBCAST OF HOUSE AMNESTY VOTE

WAS NO. 1 USTREAM IN THE WORLD WEDNESDAY NIGHT



Thanks to all of you who joined us in our conference room via www.NumbersUSA.tv tonight.



We started at 3:30 p.m. just before Senate Majority Leader Reid had promised to have a Senate vote. We stayed live until we lost the House vote after 9 p.m. We were amazed how many of you stuck with us for hours.



During most of the early part, we were ranked No. 2 in the world. And during the final couple hours we were ranked No. 1 in viewership.



20 House Members Failed To Vote



The usual 218 vote majority was not needed tonight because 20 Representatives failed to show up to vote:



DEMOCRATS: Berry (Ark.), Cohen (Tenn.), Delahunt (Mass.), Kilpatrick (Mich.), Marshall (Ga.), Mollohan (W.Va.), Schiff (Calif.) and Wu (Oregon)



REPUBLICANS: Bilbray (Calif.), Blunt (Mo.) Buyer (Ind.), Fallin (Okla.), Gingrey (Ga.), Granger (Texas), Griffith (Ala.), Marchant (Texas), McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), Radanovich (Calif.) and Stutzman (Ind.)



It is doubtful that these absences affected the final outcome.



8 REPUBLICANS Broke With Their Party Leadership

And Voted FOR The Amnesty



Our chances to defeat the amnesty were sunk with the defection of these 8 Republicans in favor of amnesty:



DELAWARE - Castle

FLORIDA - L. Diaz-Balart

FLORIDA - M. Diaz-Balart

FLORIDA - Ros-Lehtinen

HAWAII - Djou

LOUISIANA - Cao

MICHIGAN - Ehlers

SOUTH CAROLINA - Inglis



38 DEMOCRATS Broke With Their Party Leadership And Voted AGAINST Amnesty



We almost did as well with Democrats as I had hoped. I had always said we needed at least 42 Democrats to vote for unemployed Americans and against the amnesty, although I felt 45 probably was needed. Because of so many Republican defections, we actually needed more.



These were both re-elected Democrats and Democrats who were defeated, all of whom went against incredibly emotional appeals from their Party's top leaders in floor speeches tonight.



It is quite rare for a Speaker of the House to go to the floor and make a speech. But Speaker Pelosi made it clear that passing this amnesty is one of the dearest things to her heart in an impassioned speech that seemed to laud as a hero every citizen of another country who is courageous enough to break our immigration laws.



Nonetheless, these Democrats OPPOSED the amnesty:



ALABAMA - Barrow

ALABAMA - Bright

ARKANSAS - Ross



ILLINOIS - Costello

ILLINOIS - Lipinski



INDIANA - Donnelly

INDIANA - Ellsworth

INDIANA - Visclosky



KENTUCKY - Chandler

MARYLAND - Kratovil

MICHIGAN - Stupak

MINNESOTA - Peterson



MISSISSIPPI - Childers

MISSISSIPPI - Taylor



NEW YORK - Arcuri

NEW YORK - Higgins

NEW YORK - Owens



NORTH CAROLINA - Kissell

NORTH CAROLINA - McIntyre

NORTH CAROLINA - Shuler



OHIO - Boccieri

OHIO - Kaptur

OHIO - Space

OHIO - Wilson

OKLAHOMA - Boren



PENNSYLVANIA - Altmire

PENNSYLVANIA - Carney

PENNYSLVANIA - Critz

PENNSYLVANIA - Dahlkemper

PENNSYLVANIA - Holden

PENNSYLVANIA - Kanjorski

PENNSYLVANIA - P. Murphy



UTAH - Matheson

VIRGINIA - Boucher

VIRGINIA - Nye

WASHINGTON - Baird

WEST VIRGINIA - Rahall



No matter what you may think about the rest of the politics of these Members, I hope those of you in their states will give them major pats on the back for taking this stand.



Notice how they are from all over the country.



Special thanks to all of you Pennsylvanians who outdid yourself with 7 Democrats voting NO.



And how often do you New Yorkers have something to be proud about when it comes to immigration voting? But you did well tonight. So did those of you from Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina.



I'm especially proud of all the Democrats who lost their seats in the November elections and still voted against their Party leaders and against the amnesty tonight.



Most Senate voicemail boxes are full. So, you won't be able to leave messages. You need to start calling after 7 a.m. EST Thursday for a last chance to affect the outcome.