Chuck Schumer: GOP’s H.R.2 Border Bill Threatens World Democracy

The GOP’s demand for enforcement of U.S. border law is a “partisan” threat to worldwide democracy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a letter to the Senate.

“We cannot let partisan politics get in the way of defending democracy; that would be playing right into the hands of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [China President] Xi [Jinping],” Schumer said in the November 26 letter describing his plans for December.

He wrote:

The biggest holdup to the national security assistance package right now is the insistence by our Republican colleagues on partisan border policy as a condition for vital Ukraine aid. This has injected a decades old, hyper-partisan issue into overwhelmingly bipartisan priorities. Democrats stand ready to work on common-sense solutions to address immigration, but purely partisan hard-right demands, like those in H.R. 2, jeopardize the entire national security supplemental package.

The legislation is delayed because Democrats are demanding roughly $14 million to accelerate the inflow of illegal migrants into Americans’ workplaces and communities. The plan is a top priority for Schumer because immigration is a top priority for the Democrats’ alliance of donors and progressives — especially in Schumer’s New York and other blue cities that use migrants as a compliant and cheap replacement for the U.S. middle class.

In contrast, nearly all Republican House members, and a majority of Republican senators, are demanding popular legal reforms to block the administration’s use of loopholes to import at least six million illegal migrants for wages, resources, and jobs that would otherwise go to ordinary Americans. The useful but incomplete reforms are included in the House’s H.R. 2. stabilization bill.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

Schumer insisted that preserving Ukraine’s border with Russia is a higher priority than accepting the GOP’s popular policies:

Remember what [Ulkraine] President Zelenskyy told us in the Old Senate Chamber when he addressed Senators in September, “If we don’t get the aid, we will lose the war.” Nothing would make autocrats like Putin or Xi happier right now than to see the United States waver in our support for the Ukrainian people and its military. This is not just about Ukrainian or Transatlantic security, it’s about American security as well because an unchecked Putin would be an emboldened Putin.

…

The decisions we will have to make in the coming weeks on the aid package could determine the trajectory of democracy and the resilience of the transatlantic alliance for a generation. Giving Putin and Xi what they want would be a terrible, terrible mistake, and one that would come back to haunt us. The Senate must once again rise to the occasion and meet the historic moment. We cannot let partisan politics get in the way of defending democracy; that would be playing right into the hands of Putin and Xi.

A group of six Republican and Democratic Senators are trying to come up with a bipartisan deal to break the back of the GOP’s plan to stabilize the border. Their deal may include cosmetic changes — additional border funding and some legal changes that preserve many of the administration’s many border loopholes.

Schumer said:

Negotiations between Democrats and Republicans have continued through the Thanksgiving holiday. We will need bipartisan cooperation and compromise to achieve a reasonable, realistic agreement that both sides can support.

But Schumer — and his potential Republican allies — face three big problems.

The disagreement is a must-win for the House’s new GOP speaker, Rep. Mike Johns0n (R-LA). He needs to rally the party, raise campaign funds, and spur turnout in 2024.

Also, the GOP’s election-winning base considers immigration enforcement to be a top priority and is very skeptical about Congress’s willingness to enforce the border for the benefit of ordinary Americans.

Also, the Republican base increasingly opposes the administration’s maximalist support for the so-far failed war against Russia in territories claimed by Ukraine. “Nearly half of Democrats think Ukraine receives about the right amount of support; 59% of Republicans say the United States is spending too much aiding Ukraine,” the Associated Press (AP) reported on November 22.

The Biden migration has added at least four million workers to the nation’s workforce by minimizing enforcement of the nation’s border law.

That flood was urged and welcomed by business groups because it cuts Americans’ blue-collar wages and white-collar salaries. It also reduces marketplace pressure to invest in productivity-boosting technology, heartland states, and overseas markets. And it reduces economic pressure on the federal government to deal with the drug and “Deaths of Despair” crises.

Biden’s easy-migration policies are deliberately adding the foreigners’ problems to the lengthening list of Americans’ problems — homelessness, low wages, a shrinking middle class, slowing innovation, declining blue-collar life expectancy, spreading poverty, the rising death toll from drugs, and the spreading alienation among young people.