Overrun with new "citizens": if the Bush-Kennedy immigration plan in the Senate is enacted, the United States could be flooded with more than 200 million new legal immigrants in the next 20 years!

The first part of President Bush's televised May 15 immigration speech was carefully crafted to appease his conservative base, which he has alienated with his open-borders policies. Hence, the address was front-loaded with references to sovereignty and security and promises to beef up border enforcement with more Border Patrol agents and a temporary deployment of National Guard units. The back end of the address was a salvo aimed at prodding Congress to adopt his proposals of amnesty for millions of illegal aliens already here as well as a continuous flow of foreign "guest workers."

Millions of viewers watched President Bush's speech. Many of them, no doubt, focused on the front end (as the speech writers had planned) and came away optimistically hopeful that the president had gotten the message and was finally getting serious about our border crisis. How ever, on the same day as President Bush's speech, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions released an impact analysis of the Senate immigration bill--which President Bush supports--that will shock and dismay any who are putting hope for sane immigration policy in proposals coming from the White House or the Senate leadership.

Reality Check

The numbers are staggering and mind-numbing. According to the detailed analysis by Sen. Sessions and his staff, if the Senate bill is allowed to pass, we could expect to see up to 217 million legal immigrants enter the United States over the next 20 years! Have the president or the Senate leaders in either party given the American people even the slightest hint that this immigration tsunami is hidden within the fine print of the 614-page bill? Of course not; that would be political suicide for any politician supporting the bill. But enacting the bill into law would amount to national suicide, as no nation has ever, or could ever, survive such an immigration onslaught.

As Senator Sessions points out, the bill "allows at least 6.5 million, and up to 60.7 million new guest workers to come to the United States over the next 20 years. There is nothing 'temporary' about these workers. Employers may file a green card application on their behalf as soon as they arrive in the United States, or the worker may self-petition for a green card after four years of work." The bill would also allow "at least 7.8 million, and up to 72.8 million immediate family members of low-skilled workers to come to the United States over the next 20 years."

Furthermore, the Senate bill dramatically multiplies the number of H-1B visas for skilled ...