Congress Attempts To Deal With Immigration, Again (Feb. 2024)

(The Guardian) Chuck Schumer also said negotiations on immigration policy changes “have not concluded”, and warned that “many on the hard right are mightily trying to sink the bipartisan work happening here in the Senate”.

A bipartisan group of senators has for weeks been bargaining over changes to border policy, which Republicans have demanded in exchange for supporting Joe Biden’s request for military assistance to Israel and Ukraine. Those negotiations have not yet resulted in a deal, but rightwing Republicans, most worryingly House speaker Mike Johnson, have attacked them.

In his comments on the Senate floor, Schumer warned that the collapse of talks would imperil two of America’s allies: For months, we have been true to our word, working with Republicans on border security, listening to their proposals, and coming to agreement on a vast range of issues. We have not concluded negotiations, so we will keep going to get this done.

Democrats have always been ready and willing to have a debate on the border. We want to get this done, we have continued to work to get this done, and we remain committed – we remain committed – to bipartisanship. Both sides will have to give. It is unfortunate, but frankly not surprising, that many on the hard right are mightily trying to sink the bipartisan work happening here in the Senate. But in the Senate, our responsibility is clear: we need to put the needs of our country above the interests of party politics.

Because the security of our southern border is on the line.

The security of Israel is on the line.

The health and safety of innocent Gaza civilians is on the line.

The stability of the Indo Pacific region is on the line.

And finally – as every Senator on both sides knows – the survival of Ukraine is on the line.

(The Guardian) Ukraine and Israel aid under threat as immigration bill faces stiff opposition
The Senate over the weekend released the text of its long-awaited proposal to enact strict immigration policy measures meant to discourage migrants from crossing the southern border. Republicans have demanded passage of the legislation in exchange for their votes for another round of military aid to Ukraine, as well as Israel. But the proposal wasn’t enough for many in the GOP, most significantly House speaker Mike Johnson, who declared the legislation “dead on arrival”. Several Democrats are also objecting to measures in the bill that would essentially turn away migrants, raising questions about whether it has enough support in either chamber to pass.

If the bill dies, it’s unclear how Congress will find agreement on providing military aid to two of America’s biggest national security priorities, particularly Ukraine, whose cause far-right lawmakers have turned against. While Joe Biden has argued the two countries’ causes are linked, Johnson vowed over the weekend to hold a vote on a stand-alone aid package for Israel – a prospect Biden and the Democrats rejected as insufficient. The deadlock raises the prospect that neither country will receive the US military assistance they argue they need, at least not anytime soon.

(The Guardian) The three senators who crafted the immigration policy compromise are Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Republican James Lankford of Oklahoma and Kyrsten Sinema, an independent representing Arizona.

The trio has each released their own starkly summaries of the wide-ranging bill, which highlights different aspects of it in, line with their own philosophies.

“The new border security bill does not include amnesty of any kind,” reads Lankford’s summary. It dubs the current immigration system “Catch & Release” and says the bill would replace it with “Catch & Deport”. The Oklahoman highlights one of the biggest changes the proposal would make at the border, which is automatically closing it to new arrivals if crossing reach a certain point. From his summary: Changes the default when the border is overrun from releasing everyone into the country to deporting everyone out of the country. When the average number of crossings exceeds 5,000 people a week (which it has every week but one in the past four months) everyone crossing illegally everyday is rapidly deported out of the country without an asylum screening. In the past four months almost a million people have crossed our border. If this law had been in place four months ago, all of them would have been deported out of the country, rather than released into the country.

When the border closes, it stays closed and everyone is deported every day until the number of people crossing illegally drops. Once the number of encounters drop, the border continues to stay closed for up to an additional two weeks to continue to drive the numbers down; It closes the border when we exceed our capacity to detain and deport so no one is released into the US because of the crowd.

(The Guardian) “Are we, as Republicans, going to have press conferences and complain the border’s bad, and then intentionally leave it open?”

That’s the question posed in an interview with Fox News by James Lankford, the Oklahoma senator who negotiated the immigration policy deal, which is now under siege from his fellow Republicans in the House and Senate. Since Joe Biden took office three years ago, the GOP has accused the president of mishandling border security, and Lankford argues that it would be a mistake to reject legislation that would improve the situation.

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The special election to replace expelled Republican congressman George Santos could turn into something of a proxy war over the immigration policy bill.

The New York Times reports that Mazi Pilip, the Republican candidate for Santos’s old seat in the city’s Long Island suburbs, has come out against the bill. Her Democratic opponent, Tom Suozzi, says he would support it.

Voters in New York’s third congressional district voted for Biden in 2020, but elected Santos two years later, only to find out that he had lied about most everything. The House voted to expel him late last year, setting up the 13 February special election that forecasters view as a toss-up.

(The Guardian) House Republican leaders demand Senate reject immigration compromise
In a just-released statement, the top Republicans in the House called on the Senate to vote down the bipartisan immigration policy legislation.

“Any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time. It is DEAD on arrival in the House. We encourage the U.S. Senate to reject it,” speaker Mike Johnson, majority leader Steve Scalise, whip Tom Emmer and conference chairwoman Elise Stefanik said.

They instead called on Congress’s upper chamber to pass the Secure the Border Act, a package of hardline policies the House approved last year – among them, restarting construction of Donald Trump’s border wall – that Democrats have rejected.

“Because President Biden has refused to utilize his broad executive authority to end the border catastrophe that he has created, the House led nine months ago with the passage of the Secure the Border Act (H.R. 2). That bill contains the necessary components to actually stem the flow of illegals and end the present crisis. The Senate must take it up immediately,” they said.