{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://web.archive.org/web/20141203061848/http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=A913472F-0EEA-48A2-9272-18F8482C47E5", "Sessions: Time To Stand Strong For The American People", "2014-11-20", "2014", "2014-11", "Republican", "House", "AL", "Jeff Sessions", "S001141", "web.archive.org", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON\u2014U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee and a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in response to the President\u2019s speech on immigration executive action.\u00a0Sessions outlines a plan for Congress to use the power of the purse to ensure no funds are available for the President to implement his unlawful scheme:\n\u201cPresident Obama\u2019s executive amnesty violates the laws Congress has passed in order to create and implement laws Congress has refused to pass.\u00a0 The President is providing an estimated 5 million illegal immigrants with social security numbers, photo IDs and work permits\u2014allowing them to now take jobs directly from struggling Americans during a time of record immigration, low wages, and high joblessness.\u00a0\nThis amnesty plan was rejected by the American people\u2019s Congress.\u00a0 By refusing to carry out the laws of the United States in order to make his own, the President is endangering our entire Constitutional order.\u00a0\nThe President\u2019s plan will apparently also allow many illegal immigrants to receive green cards and become legal permanent residents\u2014meaning they can access almost all U.S. welfare programs, have lifetime work authorization, obtain citizenship, and sponsor foreign relatives to join them in the U.S.\nLaw enforcement has warned this unprecedented amnesty will unleash a \u2018tidal wave\u2019 of new illegal immigration flooding into American neighborhoods at taxpayers\u2019 expense.\nThe President\u2019s plan also calls for boosting foreign worker programs for IT companies that experts tell us displace U.S. workers and keep wages low.\nThe President\u2019s unconstitutional action is a direct threat to our Republican system of government and will have catastrophic consequences for the American people.\u00a0 It must be stopped.\u00a0 And the way to stop it is by using Congress\u2019 power of the purse.\nThe House should send the Senate a government funding bill which ensures no funds can be spent for this unlawful purpose.\u00a0 If Reid\u2019s Senate Democrats vote to surrender their own institution to an imperial decree and block the measure, then the House should send a short-term funding measure so the new GOP majority can be sworn in and pass a funding bill with the needed language.\nCongress has no higher duty than to protect the American people and our Constitution.\u00a0 The President\u2019s action is a threat to every working person in this country\u2014their jobs, wages, dreams, hopes and futures.\u00a0 For years, the American people have begged and pleaded for a lawful system of immigration that serves the nation and makes us proud\u2014but the politicians have refused, refused, refused. \u00a0\nIt is time to stand strong for the American people.\u00a0 It is time to champion the interests of those constantly neglected on the question of immigration: the men and women and children we represent\u2014the citizens of this country to whom we owe our ultimate allegiance.\u00a0 Every American must ask their Senator where they stand.\u201d\n\u00a0\nBACKGROUND:\nLegal Immigration:\nThe U.S. currently provides green cards to an additional 1 million permanent residents each year (who are eventually able to attain citizenship) in addition to about 700,000 temporary guest workers and 200,000 relatives of those guest workers. The inflow of guest workers includes a large number of STEM workers that are displacing American STEM-trained college graduates and recent immigrants.\u00a0 Since the year 2000, the U.S. has issued nearly 30 million visas for permanent immigrants or temporary guest workers.\u00a0 As reported by the Pew Research Center, the total number of immigrants in the U.S. has reached a record 41.3 million. The share of the U.S. population that was born in another country, per the Census Bureau, has quadrupled.\nAccording to Harvard labor economist Dr. George Borjas, high immigration rates during the last two decades of the 20th century reduced wages for lower-skilled U.S. workers by more than 7 percent.\u00a0\nThe President\u2019s plan to unilaterally and massively expand the labor supply through illegal amnesty and expanded foreign worker programs would, of course, mean yet lower wages and higher unemployment (as CBO confirmed). \u00a0(Click here to read Civil Rights Commission Member Peter Kirsanow\u2019s letter to the President about how this executive amnesty would be disastrous for black workers in the United States.)\nIllegal Immigration: \nSince taking office, President Obama has engaged in a sustained and calculated campaign to dismantle the immigration laws of the United States.\u00a0 As his own former ICE Director, John Sandweg explained: \u201cif you\u2019re a run-of-the-mill immigrant living here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero.\u201d\u00a0 ICE officers report that their agency caters to special interests and open borders activists, while they are ordered to ignore their oaths and the laws of the United States.\nPresident Obama has plunged our immigration system into a state of lawless chaos.\u00a0 People merely show up at the border and are released into the United States.\u00a0 People overstay their visas without consequence.\u00a0 The asylum system is racked with fraud.\u00a0 Every month seemingly brings some new order further reducing the integrity of our immigration system.\u00a0 In recent months President Obama unilaterally increased guest worker admissions by 100,000; removed restrictions on the admissions of foreign nationals with limited terror-ties; unilaterally expedited chain migration from Haiti; extended amnesty provisions for Honduran and Nicaraguan nationals; attempted to recruit illegal immigrants for military positions even as Americans servicemembers are being laid off; and released more than 100,000 illegal immigrants into the interior of the United States; and released last year 36,000 convicted criminal aliens back into American communities.\u00a0\nThe effective policy of the United States now is that anyone in the world who illegally manages their way into the interior of the United States\u2014whether by overstaying a visa or coming across the border\u2014can remain and work in the United States.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://web.archive.org/web/20141203061848/http://www.sessions.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=A913472F-0EEA-48A2-9272-18F8482C47E5"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.0151918977499008, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}