- Strengthen border security as a condition for further aid to Ukraine (check!)
- A stricter and faster asylum processing system would prevent people who don’t meet asylum criteria from staying and working for years while their case goes through the courts (check!)
- Increased headcount for Customs and Border Protection, Immigration Control and Customs Enforcement (1,500 and 1,200 respectively – check, check!)
- Huge investments in fentanyl detection technology and other anti-trafficking efforts (check it out!)
- Reinstating things like Title 42 restrictions, allowing the president to “shut down” most of the asylum system (although this version does not require a public health pretext and has more severe consequences for border crossers; Probably Check Plus).
House Republicans should have braced themselves in disbelief. But within hours of the 370-page bill being introduced, House Republican Leader It precluded them from voting on any of them in their chambers.
“I’ve seen enough” said Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, later adding, “It was a waste of time.” He can’t seem to accept “yes” for an answer.
There are many ways to interpret why this long-awaited and much-needed bill was, in Johnson’s words, “dead on arrival in the House of Commons,” but perhaps Johnson’s conference was They may want to keep “border chaos” a real issue until the 2024 election. He says as much as Trump, the party’s likely presidential nominee, wants to continue campaigning on the idea that only he can solve problems.
Perhaps Republicans really believe they should support the tougher bill they introduced last year, known as HR 2. There are two major problems with this strategy. First, HR2 defunds almost everything that could prevent border closures. intersection.
Second, even if Republicans control the White House, it almost certainly won’t become law. and Both houses. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) himself has pointed this out. (For procedural reasons, the bill would need 60 votes, which it did not receive.)
Maybe members of Congress are genuinely confused about how immigration law works. After all, they continue to insist that President Biden take actions that courts have determined are illegal. They also appear to have misunderstood (misrepresented?) one aspect of the bipartisan Senate agreement. by suggesting that “We’re admitting 5,000 illegal immigrants per day.” Actually, that’s not what this bill does. Rather, when that threshold has recently been reached (as is currently the case), it will force the United States to block anyone passing between ports of entry, even from applying for asylum.
Perhaps House Republicans have convinced themselves that any bill that appeals to Democrats must, in effect, be too reasonable for them to consider. In a twist on Groucho Marx, they would never belong to a club that had anyone else as a member.
Hardline Republicans had already begun efforts to punish them. Own Party members who worked on the bipartisan agreement, including lead Republican negotiator Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma; Poor Lankford reportedly never wanted the job, but he caught the falling knife anyway, and it stabbed him in the back.
Perhaps House Republicans are eager to repeat their failed effort to repeal Obamacare in 2017. At the time, they had been agitating for multiple election cycles to overhaul America’s health care system. And when they were empowered to do so, they realized they had no real solution. Everything they said on this issue was nonsensical posturing and (fortunately) nothing got through.
Unlike the Obamacare repeal debacle, passage of the Senate border bill probably won’t be that bad. I have serious concerns about its Title 42-like powers and other provisions regarding asylum. But many of the bills make useful changes and, in theory, should have strong bipartisan support.
For example, it would invest much-needed resources in its borders. It would give a path to permanent legal status for our Afghan allies, those who are already in the United States under review but are stuck in legal limbo. right. And for the first time, it would require vulnerable unaccompanied children seeking asylum to receive legal advice.
The bill’s negotiators in the White House and Senate are currently trying to protect it from myriad falsehoods about things like open borders. But the burden of proving or disproving the merits of this hard-fought agreement should rest with the Speaker. So what exactly is Mr Johnson’s opposition to his party running for office and doing the many things it should do?