The following contains notes from the speech given by NumbersUSA Executive Director Roy Beck during a panel debate at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) on Saturday, February 19, 2005. This is not an official transcript of the speech.

The topic given to this panel is provocative: "Immigration Reform: Recognizing Reality or Surrendering Principles."

What reality? What principles? And what reform?

If you pick the right principles and understand reality, there is no need to surrender anything for reform.

One kind of proposed reform involves dramatically increasing legal and illegal immigrant workers. This is Pres. Bush's and Sen. Kennedy's idea of reform.

The other reform -- which NumbersUSA and most Americans support -- would dramatically reduce the number of legal and illegal immigrant workers in order to assist millions of vulnerable American working families.

Reality: Since 1970, we've escalated total legal and illegal immigration from a quarter of a million a year to a conservative estimate of 2 million a year -- at least an 800% increase.

Reality: Adding 2 million foreign workers and family a year has depressed American wages, has totally collapsed many middle-class occupations, and has seriously harmed millions of American working families.

Reality: Some 14 million American workers cannot currently find a full-time job, particularly at the low-skill and at the high-tech levels.

Principle: Any nation's immigration policy should serve the needs of the citizens of that nation.

Principle: Immigration reform that deals with reality would reduce the numbers of foreign workers.

The national, bi-partisan, presidential/congressional Commission on Immigration Reform a few years ago found that the key problem with immigration is that the numbers of both legal and illegal immigrants are just too high.

#1: Stop holding an annual lottery to bring in workers without any regard to their skills or our need for them.

#2: Eliminate the chain migration program that lets recent immigrants -- not the American people as a whole -- choose the next immigrants without any regard to their skills or our need for them.

#3: Use enforcement mechanisms to begin a steady reduction of the total illegal worker population in this country.

One of the biggest obstacles to tackling the illegal alien problem is that is that too many leaders think illegal immigration is a victimless crime.

They even go so far as use phrases like "good-hearted people" and "courageous people" to describe illegal aliens.

But most illegal aliens are like burglars who break into our homes without weapons or any intent to do us bodily harm. Rather, they are just breaking the law to take material things from us.

But no matter how good they are to their children or what civic positions they may otherwise hold, we do not call these burglars good-hearted and courageous. We prosecute them and do our best to keep them from stealing from us again.

Most illegal aliens are like those burglars. They aren't professional criminals. They don't intend us harm.

But they are wage thieves nonetheless. They break the law to steal jobs to which they are not entitled and in the process depress wages of millions of other American workers.

They steal wages from American workers and steal taxes from the American taxpayers who must subsidize the social and physical infrastructure for these mostly low-wage workers.

I really see only one area where reality may make it hard to stick to our principles:

That is, in principle, all of the 10-20 million illegal aliens in this country should be deported right now -- they deserve it.

The reality, though, is that -- although our free-market economy did not need them before they came -- our free market economy adjusted as the millions of illegal aliens were allowed by the federal government to illegally take jobs.

Now, our economy is a bit addicted to all those illegal workers.

The cheap-labor lobbies are always saying that if all the illegal workers suddenly went home tomorrow that our economy would collapse.

Well, that is an overstatement, but it would cause a great deal of disruption and dislocation for American citizens.

Since the principle is that immigration policy should serve the interests of citizens, I do not believe we should have mass deportations that would seek out and expel 10 million people a year -- because that would be too disruptive to U.S. citizens.

Please don't misunderstand. I am not opposed to deportations. And I think that every illegal alien who comes in contact with law enforcement should be deported.

But our economy IS like a drug addict who didn't need the drug in the first place and definitely has to be rid of the drug eventually for a healthy future. But going cold turkey and withdrawing too fast from the drug may be very harmful to the addict. A slower withdrawal is required.

Thus, the answer is to our immigration problems is not to reward the 10-20 million illegal aliens with amnesty -- nor is it to round them up in one fell swoop (even though they deserve it).

The cheap labor lobbies nearly always offer those two as our only choices, setting up the mass roundups as a straw man issue.

But the answer is to significantly increase the chances for an illegal alien of any class, status or job to be detected and deported and to make it increasingly difficult to get a job so that hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens each year are either being deported or are voluntarily going home because the payoff for staying just isn't worth it any more.

There are three main ways we can do that:

#1: Require the federal government to pick up and deport any illegal alien reported by any local law enforcement agency (pass the CLEAR Act).

#2: Require all businesses to do an easy phone or internet verification on the right of each employee to work in the U.S. (We already have the volunteer national system in operation.)

#3: Have the President go on national TV and tell illegal aliens that they are not wanted in this country and that they should go home. You wouldn't believe how effective that would be in slowing illegal immigration to this country.

These actions will seriously reduce the flow of illegal aliens into the country as people in other nations see the rewards so dramatically reduced.

Instead of adding another half-million net foreign workers to the illegal alien population each year, we will see that illegal population actually shrinking by hundreds of thousands each year.

The rate of illegal aliens leaving will be large enough to start bringing relief to American workers but modest enough to allow the free-market to adjust to the departures of the foreign workers leaving labor markets without significant disruptions to consumers.

That is an immigration reform that recognizes reality without surrendering principles.

Unfortunately, in my time being around supporters of the Bush guestworker plans, I heard overwhelming confirmation of the principle that is most driving the President.

The principle is that businesses that pay such low wages and offer such bad working conditions that few Americans will take jobs with them.....that such businesses should not have to make the effort to attract American workers. Rather, it is felt that it would almost be a crime not to let such businesses dip into the global pool of billions of impoverished workers to fill those American jobs.

The principle is that more immigration and foreign labor importation is necessary so that collapsed occupations can retain their present peasant-level incomes. I am not seeing any interest in letting the free-market work its wonders.

The good news is that the outcry against that kind of thinking is getting louder and louder from the American people.

We did our noisy part in Washington this past week.

Please keep doing your part, using and re-using our faxing system to press for the right kind of reform based on the right principles.