The fact that 'everything else' passed in the Lame Duck session, means that your activism against the amnesty is seen as an even more amazing accomplishment of grassroots activism.

For the last week, newspapers throughout the country have been filled with editorials, opinion columns and even news stories about how "tragic" it was that the amnesty was the only item on the President's wish list that didn't pass just before Congress left town for Christmas.

All of us who worked to stop the amnesty have been described repeatedly the last week in the worst possible terms -- we're even accused of prompting suicides.

That is why I hope all of you will let your Members of Congress know just how happy you are that the amnesty was defeated.   After seeing all the hand-wringing in their local media, they need to know of the great joy among many of their constituents.

REMIND CONGRESS THAT PUTTING AMERICANS BACK TO WORK HAS TO BE FIRST PRIORITY

We want your Members who voted FOR the amnesty to know how happy you are that they didn't succeed.

And we want your Members who voted AGAINST the amnesty to feel your support so that they can shrug off the nearly unanimous wailing from media voices for them to pass an amnesty in the new Congress.

Let all of them know that Congress AND the President should show us some actions to back up their many claims that JOBS are their top priority. There may indeed be some compelling cases of illegal aliens, but they have to wait for consideration until Congress does something to stop 7 million illegal aliens from holding construction, manufacturing, service and transportation jobs and keeping 7 million unemployed Americans from having them.

REFUSE TO ACCEPT THE GUILT TRIP PROMOTED BY MEDIA

Unfortunately, close to zero of the journalists writing about the amnesty defeat point out that we opponents are concerned about how illegal immigration leaves millions of Americans jobless. To most journalists, the only reason to stop the amnesty is cold-hearted distaste for anybody who is foreign.

But we know that an amnesty at this point would only encourage millions more foreign workers to come to the U.S. to illegally take jobs and often to risk the lives of their children to smuggle them in with hopes that they some day might be able to lobby for their own amnesty.

A typical overwrought news report was one in the Chicago area about some political theatre by the Immigrant Youth Justice League:

Standing in the shadow of the Federal Building, four undocumented immigrants risked arrest Tuesday to talk about on their attempted suicides, urging peers with similar depression to stay strong and seek help. In front of them, seven people lay lifeless on the pavement, dressed in graduation gowns. Behind them, photos of three peers who killed themselves hung from a chain-link fence.

In another, national columnist Connie Schultz accused all of us of mocking the meaning of Christmas by opposing amnesty. Schultz wrote:

What footnote to Jesus did I miss? Heres what Jesus says in every copy of the Bible in our home: "Love one another, as I have loved you." Nowhere can I find this asterisk: But only if they are born in America.

In general, secularists and clergy alike who spoke publicly about our tremendous political success in stopping the amnesty became sentimentalist armchair theologians who equate "loving one another" with allowing anybody in the world who wants a job in the U.S. to come take one. Their theology and political ideology entails a rejection of the U.S. federal government putting the interests of American workers ahead of illegal aliens.

Notice the contempt that Schultz has for those of us who would say that in fact people who are "born in America" do deserve a special priority attention from  the national community that is the United States of America.

At risk of being an armchair theologian myself, I am going to state outright that neither Schultz nor any of her other compatriots in the media have the spirit of Christmas right. Their attempt to wrap their globalism in some religous meaning as a way to fight our emphasis on community is itself a form of sacrilege.

PRO-AMNESTY ENTHUSIASTS CANNOT BELIEVE THAT WE BEAT THEM

Most commentators have noted that it seemed to them that some of the things that the Lame Duck Congress passed should have been a lot more difficult than the DREAM Act to pass. They are astounded that it failed.

Folks, that is just how amazing your efforts were in December.

Pres. Obama listed what you did as his biggest disappointment. And cable TV has had one interview after another of people wondering how he can overcome that disappointment with an amnesty next year. But in the end, nobody has come up with a practical way to do it.

Keep the returning Members of Congress focused on practical legislating to put unemployed Americans back in jobs rather than sentimentally attempting to encourage more illegal immigration.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA