'BLANK CHECK'? Bill OKs $150M to Help Illegal Immigrants in US

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A Washington group is criticizing the Senate immigration bill because it allows for up to $150 million for organizations to advertise citizenship opportunities and to help illegal immigrants sign up to become citizens.

The nonpartisan Center for Immigration Services calls the money “slush funds” and earlier this week cited several concerns -- particularly that the money can go to the same groups that helped craft the legislation and that the spending appears to have no cap or oversight.

“It’s virtually a blank check,” Jon Feere, a Center for Immigration Services legal policy analyst, told FoxNews.com. “And the groups that helped draft this bill can now give themselves taxpayer dollars.”

The money is divided into two parts. The first is $100 million in grants to public and private nonprofit groups for programs that help people apply for provisional immigrant status, which includes assistance with completing applications and gathering proof of identification.

The other part is $50 million for additional assistance that includes legal help and public-awareness campaigns that tell illegal immigrants about the “eligibility and benefits of registered immigration status.”

The 844-page bill calls for the grant programs to run through 2018 and be administered by the secretary of Homeland Security through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

"Everybody wants to make sure that immigrants assimilate, and our proposal makes sure that they do by mandating that they speak English, pass civic tests and have jobs,” Alex Conant, a spokesman for Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, told FoxNews.com. “This bill is the start of the process, and we welcome suggestions for how it can be improved -- especially when it comes to insuring that taxpayer dollars are not wasted."

Rubio, a Cuban American, is a leader in the bipartisan group of eight senators that drafted the immigration reform legislation, which will impact roughly 11 people now living in the United States illegally.

Though the bill guidelines are specific regarding amounts and which types of groups are eligible, the Center for Immigration Services is also concerned about a provision that leaves open the possibility of addition taxpayer funding and another that says the money can be spent on “any other assistance” considered “useful or necessary.”  

“It seems to me, there’s a need for more guidelines,” Feere said. “Certainly this pro amnesty law is hard. … But one would think there would be volunteers to help immigrants fill out the paperwork.”

His group calls those that helped draft the legislation “pro amnesty lobbyists” and includes such names as La Raza, Casa de Maryland and the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican and critic of the Senate plan, said this week the bipartisan group has “refused” to provide estimates on how their legislation will impact the future migration of immigrants to the United States.

He says conservative estimates show more than 30 million immigrants will be granted legal status in the United States over the next 10 years, though the senators argue their plan “does not significantly increase long-term, annual migration.”

Sessions also argues the estimated 30 million will be able to bring relatives and that the legislation will bring in more low-skilled workers, not high-skilled ones, as the group has projected.

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GUN VOTE SHOWDOWN: Background Check Plan Fails, Obama Lashes Out

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  April 9, 2013: Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. is followed by reporters as he walks from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's, D-Nev., office on Capitol Hill in Washington.AP

Senate Democrats are trying desperately to round up a bipartisan coalition in advance of a critical round of gun-control votes Wednesday afternoon, as fence-sitting Republicans began to peel away and new polling showed ebbing public support for tightening gun laws. 

After days of backroom wrangling, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid lined up a vote on nine amendments for late Wednesday. The first, on a compromise proposal to loosen the firearms bill's background checks provision, is considered the most vital. 

The proposal, rolled out by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., would expand background checks to gun shows and Internet sales while exempting personal transactions. The amendment is aimed at winning over reluctant conservatives -- if it fails, the overall bill stands little chance of passing. 

Democrats face a heavy lift, as they must round up a 60-vote majority. They did so last week on a procedural vote, but that coalition now appears to be eroding. 

Democratic leaders have given ever-changing assessments of where support stands. Vice President Biden said Tuesday that Democrats would get the 60 votes, but then said later in the day that it could come down to one or two senators. 

Manchin reportedly said he does not have 60 -- but then his office released a statement saying he "remains optimistic and hopeful that if Senators and the American people read the bill, they will support his commonsense approach to require criminal and mental background checks for advertised sales, including purchases at gun shows and online sales, without infringing on Americans' Second Amendment rights." 

The vote math depicts a steep uphill climb for Democrats. Opponents will need just 41 of the Senate's 100 votes to derail the Manchin-Toomey background check plan.  

Thirty-one senators voted last week to completely block debate on overall gun legislation. Just two were Democrats -- Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska. 

If all 31 oppose the Manchin-Toomey measure -- and that is not certain -- opponents would need just 10 more votes to prevail. 

So far, 11 of 16 Republicans who voted last week to let debate on the gun bill begin have said they will oppose Manchin-Toomey. That would give foes of expanded background checks 42 potential votes -- one more than they need to win. 

Among the latest to announce opposition was Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev. 

"I believe very strongly that our current background check system needs strengthening and improving, particularly in areas that could keep guns out of the hands of felons and the mentally ill. At the same time, I cannot support legislation that infringes upon the constitutional right to keep and bear arms," Heller said in a statement. 

So far, just three Republican senators have committed to voting for the amendment. 

Still uncertain was support from some Democrats from GOP-heavy states, including Max Baucus of Montana, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. Baucus and Landrieu face re-election next year. 

The Senate gun bill would extend background checks to nearly all gun purchases, toughen penalties against illegal gun trafficking and add small sums to school safety programs. 

Perhaps helping explain Democrats' problems, an AP-GfK poll this month showed that 49 percent of Americans support stricter gun laws. That was down from 58 percent who said so in January -- a month after the December killings of 20 children and six aides at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school propelled gun violence into a national issue. 

In a climactic day, the Senate planned to hold eight other votes Wednesday besides the one on background checks, all of them amendments to a broad gun control measure. 

They included Democratic proposals to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, which are expected to lose; a Republican proposal requiring states to honor other states' permits allowing concealed weapons, which faces a close vote; and a GOP substitute for the overall gun measure. 

The concealed weapons amendment, seen by advocates as protecting gun rights, was vehemently opposed by gun control groups, who say it would allow more guns into states with stricter firearms laws. 

The votes were coming a day after former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, badly injured in a 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., and her husband, Mark Kelly, tried galvanizing gun control support by visiting Capitol Hill and attending a private lunch with Democratic senators. Reid, D-Nev., called the lunch -- senators said it included emotional speeches from lawmakers -- "as moving as any" he has attended. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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State health agencies check hundreds for rabies after transplant death

Public health agencies in five states are assessing the rabies risk for hundreds of people who may have had close contact with an infected organ donor and four transplant recipients, one of whom died, officials said Saturday.

About 200 medical workers, relatives and others were assessed for potential exposure in Maryland, where the man who received an infected kidney died, state veterinarian Katherine Feldman said. She said fewer than two dozen were urged to get the rabies vaccine as a preventive measure.

In Florida, about 90 people were identified as potentially exposed, and three were offered the rabies vaccine as of Friday, state health department spokeswoman Ashley Carr said.

Illinois Department of Public Health spokeswoman Melaney Arnold said the only potential exposures there were people who worked with the patient or the transplanted organ. She said only the organ recipient is receiving rabies treatment.

Health officials in Georgia and North Carolina are also involved in the epidemiological investigation prompted by the Maryland man's death from rabies in late February, nearly 18 months after he got the kidney from a donor in Pensacola, Fla. However, officials in those states didn't respond to requests from The Associated Press about the number of people they're assessing.

Doctors in Florida didn't test the 20-year-old donor for rabies before he died in September 2011. His heart, liver and other kidney went to recipients in Florida, Georgia and Illinois. They started getting the vaccine this month, and none has had rabies symptoms. A rabies expert unconnected to the case, Dr. Rodney Willoughby of Milwaukee, said they have a strong chance of surviving since they haven't shown any symptoms.

Health officials say the virus can be spread through the infected person's saliva and mucous membranes, but human-to-human transmission is rare. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta says there has been only one documented instance of transmission by a bite in the U.S.

Feldman said Friday that the search for potential exposure subjects in Maryland was wrapping up. She said medical workers typically take precautions, and "we don't share saliva with that many people in our day-to-day goings about."

CDC spokeswoman Melissa Dankel said investigators are still trying to learn how the transplant donor got infected with the raccoon rabies virus that was found in his brain tissue and that of the Maryland man. She said the donor was an outdoorsman who might have been bitten by a wild animal in his native North Carolina before moving to Florida and beginning training as an Air Force aviation mechanic 17 weeks before his death.

He visited a clinic at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in August 2011 for abdominal pain and vomiting and was transferred to a civilian hospital four days later, said Defense Department spokeswoman Cynthia Smith. He later developed encephalitis, a brain inflammation that can have a host of causes, including rabies, but he wasn't tested for the disease, CDC officials say.

Smith said the airman died of severe gastroenteritis — inflammation of the stomach and small intestine — complicated by dehydration, electrolyte abnormalities and seizure. The Florida Department of Health said he died of encephalitis of unknown origin.

Federal rules require organ banks to disclose any known or suspected infectious conditions that might be transmitted by donor organs. CDC officials say they don't know what information was communicated.

Federal guidelines published last year for evaluating organ donors with encephalitis urge "extreme caution" if the suspected cause is a viral pathogen, such as rabies.

Dr. Michael Green, a University of Pittsburgh professor who heads the committee that wrote the guidelines, said the guidelines hadn't been published when the Florida patient died. He also said rabies transmission through solid organ transplants is rare. There have been just two other documented instances worldwide — one in Germany and a 2004 U.S. case in which all four recipients died. The CDC says there have been eight documented instances of rabies being transmitted by transplanted corneas.

"Nonetheless, if asked whether or not I would use organs where concern for rabies was active in the potential donor, I would urge extreme caution before using organs from this person," Green said.

One of the patients who died in the 2004 case was 18-year-old Joshua Hightower, of Gilmer, Texas, after a kidney transplant. He had kidney problems since he was a child. His mother, Jennifer, said Saturday that if rabies is suspected in a transplant donor, doctors should go ahead and transplant the organs, and then give recipients the rabies vaccine.

"The word has got to get out there and something's got to change," she said. "These people, like my son, he thought the transplant was going to give him a new life and a new opportunity to move forward, and it killed him — over somebody's negligence and their plain old stupidity, and that's what it is."

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Deadly winter storm wallops Midwest with snow, ice- FOXNEWS.COM EXTREME WEATHER CENTER - CHECK YOUR FLIGHT

Blinding snow, at times accompanied by thunder and lightning, which was dubbed 'Thundersnow' bombarded much of the nation's midsection Thursday, causing whiteout conditions, making major roadways all but impassable and shutting down schools and state legislatures.

Kansas, which has not seen a snow storm in the last few years, was the epicenter of the winter storm, with parts of Wichita buried under 13 inches of still-falling snow, but winter storm warnings stretched eastern Colorado through Illinois. Freezing rain and sleet were forecast for southern Missouri, southern Illinois and Arkansas. St. Louis was expected to get all of the above -- a treacherous mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has declared a State of Emergency Thursday while the National Weather Service blamed the storm on an unstable air mass, much like a thunderstorm.

"Instead of pouring rain, it's pouring snow," Scott Truett, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, said. Snow was falling at a rate of 1 1/2 to 2 inches per hour in some areas.

Several accidents were blamed on icy and slushy roadways, including a wreck in Oklahoma that killed a teenager Wednesday. Most schools in Kansas and Missouri, and many in neighboring states, were closed. Legislatures shut down early in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska and Iowa.

By midmorning Thursday, the snowfall was so heavy that Kansas City International Airport shut down. About 90 flights were also cancelled at Lambert Airport in St. Louis.

The track of the storm changed overnight and there may be more snow than ice expected in the St. Louis area but there is still a chance of sleet and freezing rain, Fox2Now.com reported. 

While heavy in nature, the snow in Witchita, Kan., is powdery, said weather service meteorologist Suzanna Sortin. She said the Wichita area had received between 11 and 13 inches of snow by midmorning, and places like Salina, Russell and Great Bend were expected to get up to 18 inches of snow.

With that in mind, Kansas transportation officials -- and even the governor -- urged people to simply stay home. Drivers were particularly warned away from the Kansas Turnpike, as whiteout conditions meant low visibility for the length of the turnpike, from Oklahoma to Kansas City. Interstate 70, which runs the length of Kansas, was also snow-packed and icy.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback closed executive offices, except for essential personnel.

"Common sense is a good thing, and we'll make it through it," Brownback said.

Some travelers gave up, filling hotels rather than skating across dangerous roadways.

At the Econo Lodge in WaKeeney, Kan., assistant manager Michael Tidball said the 48-room hotel was full by 10 p.m. Wednesday and that most guests were opting to stay an extra day. He said travelers reported that snow was freezing on their windshields faster than wipers could keep them clean.

The blowing snow didn't stop everyone. Jesse Landin, feedlot manager at McClymont Feedyard in south-central Nebraska, was out early Thursday clearing a path with his tractor so trucks could put down feed for 11,000 head of cattle, which remained outside.

"They can handle it," Landin said of the cattle. "They got good winter hair coats."

Near the Nebraska-Kansas border, as much as 8 inches fell overnight, while western Nebraska saw about half of that amount, National Weather Service forecaster Shawn Jacobs said.

Some parts of Oklahoma also had up to 8 inches of snow by Thursday morning, and the weather caused a fatal wreck Wednesday. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said 18-year-old Cody Alexander of Alex, Okla., died when his pickup truck skidded on a slushy state highway into oncoming traffic and struck a truck.

In northern Arkansas, a school bus crashed Wednesday on a steep, snowy country road, leaving three students and the driver with minor injuries.

The weather service warned that freezing rain could lead to a half-inch or more of ice accumulating Thursday in central and northern Arkansas. The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said "significant ice accumulations" are expected in far northern Arkansas.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency Thursday morning and activated the State Emergency Operations Center. The declaration allows state agencies to coordinate directly with cities and counties to provide emergency services. The Missouri Department of Transportation said Interstate 44 near Springfield was completely covered with ice Thursday morning, and traffic was moving very slow.

In Jefferson City, Mo., off-duty police sergeant Randy Werner had been perched atop a hotel for more than 24 hours as a publicity stunt for a charitable fundraiser.

As large blowing snowflakes pelted him in the face Thursday morning, Werner defiantly declared: "The weather's not bothering me, I can assure you." He then acknowledged that was a lie.

"It's blustery," he said. Werner planned to cut his camp out short, having raised less than a third of his goal.

The St. Louis region prepared with some uncertainty. Depending on the temperature and the trajectory of the storm, St. Louis could get snow, freezing rain, ice, sleet or all or some of the above. Crews were hoping to spread enough salt to keep at least the major roadways moving.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jayson Gosselin said precipitation is generally expected to drop off as the storm pushes east. Chicago and parts of Indiana, he said, could get about 2 inches of snow and some sleet.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report

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