BREAKING: Our Capitol Hill team has finished crunching the numbers of the new amnesty bill and found that the bill would grant 33 million new green cards in the first 10 years after enactment. Look for more details to come...

The 844-page bill filed by the Senate's Gang of Eight is filled with so many waivers, exemptions, loopholes, and broken promises that it's almost too much to keep up with. The most recent item that can be filed in the "broken promises" category has to do with back taxes.

Some more digging through the bill has found that illegal aliens will not have to pay back taxes before applying for and receiving amnesty. Sec. 2101 of the bill describes the process by which most of the nation's 11-18 million illegal aliens can apply for Registered Provisional Immigrant Status (including work permits).

Under a subsection entitled "Payment of Taxes", the bill states that illegal aliens will have to satisfy "any applicable Federal tax liability." The next paragraph defines "applicable Federal tax liability" as any income taxes that have been assessed by the IRS. So, f or those illegal aliens that haven't filed a tax return, they won't have to pay any taxes on any work they may have been paid for in the past.

Why is this important? For starters, when the Gang of Eight released their "framework" for immigration reform back in January, they said that illegal aliens would have to "pay back taxes" in order to receive an amnesty. The next day, Sen. Marco Rubio spoke on the Senate floor and said that illegal aliens would have to "pay back taxes." Now that there's a bill - there's no requirement to pay back taxes unless the illegal alien has already been flagged by the IRS for owing back taxes.

We're seeing this become a trend with the Gang of Eight. We were told there would be triggers. Now we know the triggers are meaningless. We were told there would be enforcement before legalization. Now we know it's legalization before
enforcement. We were told there would be an entry/exit system. Now we know the exit system excludes all land ports. What else will we learn in the upcoming weeks?

In light of this development, we've posted new faxes on your Action Board to send to your Three Members of Congress.

HOUSE TAKES DIFFERENT APPROACH

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte indicated this week that he would take a much different approach on immigration than what's going on in the Senate. He said there would be three pieces of legislation: 1) mandatory E-Verify, 2) a new guest worker program for agriculture, and 3) changes to the high-skilled visa program.

The first bill was introduced today, and it's a good one! Rep. Lamar Smith has reintroduced the Legal Workforce Act, H.R.1772, which would require all employers to use the E-Verify system. The bill is similar to the version introduced and passed by the Judiciary Committee during the last Congress but with a few modest changes.

Rep. Smith's bill would require most employers to use E-Verify within the first 6 months of enactment. It would phase it in for smaller employers over a two-year period. (The Gang of Eight's bill takes 5 years to phase in E-Verify.) The bill also contains provisions that would close up a fe w of the known issues within the E-Verify system and allow employers to run current employees through the system.

We've posted new faxes on your Action Board to send to your House Rep. asking them to cosponsor the bill.