“They never contribute more than they take out and at retirement they become very costly,” Rector said in Capitol Hill press conference on Monday with Sessions, Sen. Jim Bunning (R.-Ky.) and Rep. Bill Bilbray (R.-Calif.).

Rector explained, “Every person that gets the Z visa, and that would be about 12 million people, 9 million of which are adults--is immediately eligible for Social Security. They start to contribute to that system. They start to earn eligibility for Medicare. The White House has claimed they don’t get welfare benefits. That is absolutely untrue. For the first 10 years or so they are in the country, the adults would not get welfare benefits, but the children would. They are going to be here for fifty years. For the first 10 years they don’t get means tested welfare, but for the next forty they are going to be eligible for every single type of means tested welfare.”

Rector said it would cost the government $2.4 trillion to pay out these benefits to z visa holders. He characterized the bill as an “amnesty bill with a blank check on the U.S. taxpayer.” Entitlement programs, like Social Security and Medicare programs, are already on pace to go bankrupt due to the exploding costs of retiring baby-boomers. Rector said adding the additional retirement costs of a low-skilled population to these programs would be a “financial catastrophe.”

Bunning, who opposes the bill, suggested it could be temporarily delayed by asking the Senate Reading Clerk to read the bill text into congressional record. “If someone says to the Reading Clerk that ‘I object to the bill and you have to read it word for word’ then it won’t come tonight will it? That’s a possibility that could occur.” Bunning would not say he would make this request. He speculated that regardless of such a move the cloture vote would come sometime before Wednesday.

“Unless the White House and the leadership of the Senate agree, we will be here past the end of the week and we will not get a vote before Memorial Day,” he said. “If they decide to stonewall it and just get a bill to conference committee, then I say this bill would be passed by the end of the week.”

Monday evening, the Senate voted 69-23 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed on the immigration bill. After passage, Leader Reid and Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R.-KY.) pledged that the Senate would spend two weeks debating and amending the bill.