For the second time in as many weeks, a scrappy band of resistance fighters lodged a lobbying campaign in the Halls of the US Senate that ended up blocking an immigration reform bill that had all the backing of the big $ K-Street lobbying firms and Silicon Valley behemoths.
S386 – a bill that would have granted 90% of all Green Cards over the next 10 years to citizens of India – was prevented from getting onto the Senate Floor Thursday after Sen Dick Durbin of Illinois objected to the bill.
The lobbyists and the Senators that sponsored the bill – Mike Lee (Utah) and Kamala Harris (California) – were trying to push this bill onto the Senate floor under Unanimous Consent rules, meaning that no debate would be allowed on the bill.
But, throughout the week, Americans advocating for the rights of US tech workers made their case to Senators and their staffers that this bill is wrong in so many ways – and such a big change in immigration requires debate.
Steve Pushor, Director of Operations for the DC Area for US Techworkers, once again did a masterful job of leading a group of people who would call in to Senators offices. His multiple sources all over DC were feeding him intel all week, which enabled him to direct his team to call Senators who would likely stand up in the Senate and object to S386.
Note: Any citizen may call Senators from another state. But it is appropriate to identify yourself as such – and not try fake being a citizen of the state. That is what this team was doing. In contrast, Immigration Voice (one off the groups pushing this bill) was encouraging their members to call in to Senators offices and lie about their ZIP code (see image below).
It was a roller coaster ride and mentally exhausting but the news of Sen. Durbin’s objection to S386 had people cheering all over the country.
The other major player in this effort was Roger Ross, a Silicon Valley tech worker that has molded himself into a lobbying force on Capitol Hill. Just 6 months ago, he traveled to DC with absolutely NO experience in lobbying or dealing with govt officials. He was motivated by the injustices experienced by US tech workers all over the country – and his mission was to tell this story to anyone who would listen.
This week, he forged alliances with the multitudes of people from all over the world who are objecting to this bill – and visited Senate offices in force. Some say it was his visit to Durbin’s office that sealed the deal.
Also working in the background was US Techworkers founder Kevin Lynn. He advised both Pushor and Ross on the key players in this effort and the nuances of the legislative process. This had the effect of multiplying their abilities and enabled them to accomplish more than they ever dreamed. Kevin is a former Army officer, perhaps this is where he gets his world-class leadership skills from? We are so grateful that he’s fighting for us.
Sen Lee had bragged that this bill would be signed, sealed and delivered by Sept. 27th. But now he has to go back and rewrite this bill before it is re-introduced after the October recess. We can take a few days rest – but then its back to work.
The drama that unfolded in DC this week on S386 was a great lesson to us all. If you stand up and fight – you can win, no matter the odds.
Besides Kevin, none of the players involved had any real experience in Washington or lawmaking process. But, with a little common sense, they were able to mount a successful campaign.
I, myself, was able to get my calls in during my morning and afternoon breaks, lunch and after work. All in all I was able to get in at least 15 calls a day. Each one took no longer than 5 minutes (at most).
Anyone reading this could do the very same thing – and it would mean a lot.
We are going to need volunteers in a couple of weeks when this starts up again. Please reach out to me if you want to join this fight!
Please ask the TV channels to highlight this.
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Thanks for the great work you have done to protect US worker and ROW from getting this fraud bill to pass , we stand with you to prevent these misleading bills #NoS386 #No1044 .
and We ask our fellow Indian to stop being greedy and save their efforts to improve the immigration system to everybody and there fight should be against the fraud consultancies which misused the H1b visa and created this chaos
We did it! For the first time in American IT Worker History we had boots on the ground on the Hill, the command center hub in my condo directed a targeted dispersion of actions items that were executed in a timely quantitive and qualitative fashion.
Of course we were not the only ones, across the country peoples of many nations joined forces and called congress.
As all you know, this is a war, we won a couple of battles with the help of other lobbyist groups, but we are the spears, the frontline spark, all the groups that have been organized and be known via the brilliant Neil Munro have encouraged Americans across the county to unite against the BILLIONAIRE PLUTOCRACY we live in. Yes during this past couple of weeks, we sort of lucked out, now the bill is stuck in the mud as much of the bill’s text must be re-written for possible passage in October.
We must insist on HEARINGS and formal PUBLIC input, also called REGULAR ORDER in Washington.
Thank you for the story, fellow CT Americans!! Hopefully, we’ll get through and better this ‘legal’ immigration abuse plaguing our nation!!
I think it is also important to acknowledge that offshoring is harmful in a sense that it allows our data to be sent overseas and in jurisdictions that we cannot govern to see if the data is handled correctly. This allows for our data to be more accessible to the black market and deep web. It also allows for more mistakes in hiring as background checks cannot be properly performed. We cannot verify all schools and companies on a resume to be real. This may have been an issue when Boeing was hiring offshore and the planes crashed. It’s a safety issue. Maybe we need regulations.