Bipartisan Border Bill: Worse than Skeptics Predicted

The Senate’s draft border bill that promised to reduce migration chaos at the border actually invites a greater inflow by welcoming migrants who seek jobs or claim asylum.

“I’ve seen enough,” said a Sunday evening tweet from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), adding:

This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created. As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, “the border never closes.”

The phrase “the border never closes” is a much-replayed quote from the top Democratic negotiator, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT).

In a series of Sunday evening tweets, Murphy gloated that Democrats’ promised curb on illegal migration — including a much-touted border “shutdown” process — are trumped by many pro-migration rules:

A quicker, fairer asylum process. No more 10 yr wait. Claims processed in a non-detained, non-adversarial way in 6 months. A slightly higher asylum screening standard at the border. Also, no more waiting for work permits. Most asylum seekers can work immediately.

A brand new right to legal representation for all immigrants. Remember when Trump denied lawyers to victims of the Muslim ban?

And…the first ever government paid-for lawyers for young unaccompanied minors. A long standing injustice righted.

A requirement the President to funnel asylum claims to the land ports of entry when more than 5,000 people cross a day. The border never closes, but claims must be processed at the ports. This allows for a more a more orderly, humane asylum processing system.

But…important checks on that power. It can only be used for a limited number of days per year. It sunsets in 3 years. Emergency cases that show up in between the ports still need to be accepted. The ports must process a minimum of 1400 claims a day.

“Democrats proudly proclaim new border law ‘never closes’ the border and, of course, the entire $115 billion will be borrowed,” said a tweet from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). “Nothing, absolutely nothing, conservative about this deal.”

“’The border never closes’ -chief Democrat negotiator on the Senate bill,” tweeted Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). “That’s all you need to know.”

Murphy continued:

You can’t reduce arrivals at the border without allowing for more legal immigration. So, more visas! 50,000 extra employment and family reunification visas each year for the next 5 years. And a brand new visa category to allow non-citizens to visit family in the U.S.

A clarification of how humanitarian parole is used at the land borders, but NO changes to the President’s ability to bring in vetted, sponsored migrants through the program known as CNHV (Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela parole).

A new pathway to citizenship for Afghan parolees (the Afghan Adjustment Act) and the children of H1B holders (these kids are often currently subject to deportation when they become 21).

The bill helps fix the border and reform our broken asylum system. But it doesn’t deviate from our nation’s core values. We are a nation that rescues people from terror and violence. We are a nation that is stronger because of our tradition of immigration. Period. Stop.

Critics of the bill spotlighted sections of text that validated many of their prior warnings:

Even Republican senators who support more migration are alarmed by legislation. “I, for one, think it is a mistake to send this bill to the House without a majority of the Republican conference,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), told the Washington Post.

The descriptions by Murphy showed the hollowness of prior claims that the bill would allow the president to shut down the border during the current crisis. That was created by President Joe Biden’s decision to cancel the border security rules adopted by President Donald Trump.

The flood of new migrants would push the nation’s economy downwards because it encourages employers to reduce wages and cut investment in the labor-saving technology that raises Americans’ productivity, output, and overall wealth.

The bill would also change the nation’s society by spiking the cost of housing, so making it difficult for ordinary Americans to create the next generation of families and children.

Current law allows the federal government to import 1 million legal immigrants, even as Americans give birth to roughly 3.6 million new Americans each year, and graduate roughly 4 million youths from high schools each year.

Yet the bill supercharges the asylum system, giving many more people from around the world both the incentives and means to migrate into the United States. The huge inflow would hammer Americans’ living standards — and threaten the political careers of Republican politicians.

The bill’s asylum section creates a new asylum process that will be run by pro-migration staffers who will be eager to use their unreviewed power to award work permits, asylum, and fast-track citizenship to grateful migrants who offer “clear and convincing” stories of oppression and suffering.

The much-touted border “shutdown” trigger does not shut down the asylum process at the border.

The asylum process would get millions of Biden’s 2024 and 2025 migrants into voting booths by 2030.

The bill also does nothing to stop Biden’s “parole” migration, which imported roughly 1 million migrants into U.S. workplaces and communities during 2023. Before Biden, the parole process delivered only about 15,000 assorted migrants per year.

The bill also blocks lawsuit pushbacks by placing all judicial oversight over the migration system in the progressive-dominated D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The shift would largely prevent state and local officials — or American citizens — from trying to protect Republican goals and civic priorities from Murphy’s migration expansion law.

The bill also raises the incentive and means for foreign graduates to take more white-collar jobs throughout the United States. Fortune 500 companies already keep a population of roughly 1.5 million foreign graduates in U.S. jobs, partly because the federal government already allows the companies to pay those foreign workers with dangled offers of green cards and citizenship.

That expansion of white-collar migration comes as many white-collar jobs are being eliminated or degraded by artificial intelligence.