Here comes the Democrats' immigration bill

When President Joe Biden spoke about immigration reform on the campaign trail he at least gave us some hints as to what might be coming if he were to be elected. But the new “comprehensive immigration reform” bill that the Democrats are rolling out this week with Biden’s support goes much, much further than the ideas we heard during the presidential debates. The Associated Press has a preview of the contents of the bill and there’s nothing in it that even vaguely resembles “compromise” or “unity.” This is a progressive wish list carved out into legislative form. Let’s dig into a few of the details.

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President Joe Biden’s administration is joining Democrats on Capitol Hill to unveil a major immigration overhaul that would offer an eight-year pathway to citizenship to the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal status.

The legislation, to be released in detail Thursday morning, will reflect the broad priorities for immigration reform that Biden laid out on his first day in office, including an increase in visas, funding to process asylum applications and new technology at the southern border.

Some of the more minor items in the bill aren’t really all that terrible. More funding for immigration courts and the processing of asylum and visa requests is something we already needed and both sides will likely agree to. Expanding the number of available visas wouldn’t be all that terrible, but until we’re able to process more of them in a reasonable amount of time it’s likely rather pointless.

The big-ticket items are where we’re going to run into serious trouble. They’re proposing immediate green cards for “farmworkers” (which is the liberal term for illegal aliens coming into the country to do migrant agricultural work) and anyone who previously would have qualified for DACA status, or the “dreamers.” Then, for the rest of the roughly 11 million illegal aliens in the country, each and every one of them could apply for a five-year program where they won’t be deported and will be able to work (a violation of federal law) and pay taxes while they go through some sort of background check system. At the end of five years, they would become eligible for a green card. Three years after that they could apply for citizenship.

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Let’s just call this what it is. It’s full-on amnesty. Besides being an insult to everyone who spent the time, money, and effort to immigrate legally and become naturalized citizens, it’s an open invitation to every other prospective border jumper to head for the border with all due haste. (More on that in a moment.)

As far as the whole “unity” angle goes, as the AP report points out, previous efforts at immigration reform at least included a few sweeteners in the form of enhanced border security to tempt a few Republicans into supporting them. This bill has nothing of the sort. It’s just straight-up open amnesty and the Democrats are clearly saying it’s their way or the highway. How they expect to get sixty votes in the Senate for something like this is a mystery.

Speaking of the “open invitation” I mentioned above, do you suppose it’s a total coincidence that in the same week where this amnesty plan is being unveiled, we also saw this headline?

Migrants on the move again in Mexico and Central America

Latin America’s migrants — from the Caribbean, South America and Central America — are on the move again. After a year of pandemic-induced paralysis, those in daily contact with migrants believe the flow north could return to the high levels seen in late 2018 and early 2019. The difference is that it would happen during a pandemic…

“The flow is increasing and the problem is there’s less capacity than before to meet their needs” because of the pandemic, said Sergio Martin, head of the nongovernment aid group Doctors Without Borders in Mexico.

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Let’s not act surprised about this. We’ve long known that there are groups in the United States such as Pueblo Sin Fronteras that provide funding and other resources to help organize the migrant caravans that regularly slammed into our Borders before the Trump administration took charge. They deploy people to Mexico and Central American countries to not only organize the caravans but to educate the aspiring illegal aliens in the best way to beat the system when making asylum claims. Suspecting that this sort of immigration reform bill was on the way after Biden’s election, you can rest assured that they will be redoubling their efforts and promising the migrants that they will be allowed to stay in America indefinitely if they can make it over the border.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 20, 2024
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