Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that he would re-introduce the bipartisan immigration reform bill that failed to pass three months ago.
Schumer has no intention of seeing the bill passed this time either. This is purely a political gambit to inform the voters that Democrats are ready to "do something about the border problem" while Republicans only complain about it.
The forms of Kanly must be observed.
“This week, the Senate will return to the pressing need of our nation’s border security,” Schumer said in a letter to Senate colleagues on Sunday. “I hope Republicans and Democrats can work together to pass the bipartisan Immigration bill this coming week.”
“The American people do not have the luxury of playing partisan blame games,” he continued. “They want bipartisan action to secure the border.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) compared Schumer's gambit to a firefighter who tries to put out a fire using gasoline instead of water “and then expects praise for it.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) referred to Schumer's plot as a “political stunt.”
“We know that [Democrats’] polls are showing they are wrong on this issue,” Blackburn said. “They are trying to recover.”
With more than 1.5 million migrants arriving in America this fiscal year so far, it appears likely that by September 30, another record number of illegals will have crossed the border in the United States. That would be the third year in a row the record has been broken under Biden.
“Should it reach the House, the bill would be dead on arrival,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and GOP House leadership said in a statement.
The bill would make major changes to immigration policy, including recreating a pandemic-era policy of turning away most single men who arrive at the border as well as hiring thousands more border patrol agents. The bill also includes changes to asylum law that would allow CBP asylum officers to hear asylum claims rather than immigration court.
It sounds and looks great on paper. But as Cato Institute's David Bier, director of immigration studies at the organization, says, “It’s hard to quantify all the changes because you don’t know exactly how the administration will implement them for sure."
That's the real problem. No one trusts Joe Biden to protect the border, no matter what laws are passed.
It’s no secret why Schumer is eager to put “Democrats” and “border security” back in the same sentence. In a February Gallup poll, 55 percent of Americans said “large numbers of immigrants entering the country illegally” was a “critical threat” to the “vital interests of the United States.” In the first month of Biden’s presidency, in 2021, only 46 percent of Americans believed that threat was “critical.”
Voter concerns about immigration are showing in presidential polls, too. In an April New York Times/Siena College survey of registered voters nationwide—that found the two candidates in a statistical tie—50 percent said they approved of how Trump handled immigration as president, while only 34 percent of voters were in favor of Biden’s handling of immigration policy.
Will anyone buy this "hacky gambit" as Chris Stirewalt wrote this week, “Especially in an election year"?
Probably not. As Blackburn points out, it's a political stunt that all but the lowest of low-information voters will ignore. Besides, that "bipartisan" bill was three years into the Biden presidency. Three years after Biden promised to make immigration to the U.S. "safe, orderly, and humane. And now he wants to brag about addressing the crisis effectively?
But it’s worth remembering that this bill didn’t come up until almost three years into Biden’s presidency, long after his initial policies had helped cause the migration surge. He campaigned in 2020 promising not only to undo Trump’s cruel policies — such as family separation — but also to welcome more migrants. After taking office, he signed executive orders to do both.
Biden tried to pause deportations. He changed the definition of asylum to include fear of gang violence. He used immigration parole — which the law says should be used “on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons” — to admit hundreds of thousands of people. The parole programs alone amounted to “the largest expansion of legal immigration in modern U.S. history,” Camilo Montoya-Galvez of CBS News wrote.
Maybe that's why Republicans didn't believe that Biden would effectively enforce the provisions in the bipartisan bill.
If he's elected, Donald Trump will try to choke off legal and illegal immigration. He might try to shut the border, but how he does it without severely damaging the American economy has yet to be explained. Certainly, more border patrol agents would help, as would far better electronic monitoring of the border. And far tougher rules for being granted asylum are long overdue.
But there are national and international laws to be considered — laws governing asylum claims, especially. Trump could still make asylum claims much tougher to prove.
Trust in Joe Biden has been spent. Schumer's gambit won't move the needle the perception of Democrats on immigration one bit.
