A bipartisan group of senators revealed a long-awaited border security bill linking a series of immigration-related provisions to funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan on Sunday night, the culmination of four months of negotiations. The 370 pages, 118 billion dollars proposal, released by Senators Kyrsten Sinema (I–Ariz.), James Lankford (R–Okla.), and Chris Murphy (D–Conn.), if passed, would make dramatic changes to the U.S. immigration system.
Several lawmakers in the House and Senate have already expressed their opposition to the bill, suggesting that the road to passage will be difficult. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) She said the bill would not receive a vote in its chamber, a sentiment that Chairman Mike Johnson (R-La.) he echoedcalling it “dead on arrival” in the House. Above A dozen Republican senators are already reportedly opposed to the bill, as are Senators Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), Bob Menendez (D–NJ), and Alex Padilla (D–Calif.).
The bill is expected for an initial vote in the Senate on Wednesday and appears to face major difficulties in the House. However, it is worth examining the key provisions of this bill, if only to understand what constitutes compromise border legislation in this day and age.
The border security package includes some incentives for legal immigration and legal immigrants, including “work authorization for family members of certain visa holders” and 50,000 additional work and family visas per year for five years. It would provide relief to the so-called Documented dreamers, dependent visa holders who were brought to the United States legally as children by parents on nonimmigrant visas. They would be protected from having their legal status age at 21 if they do not obtain a green card (a situation which forces some Documented Dreamers to self-deport).
The package includes the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would ultimately provide “permanent legal status to tens of thousands of Afghan citizens” who assisted the United States and were evacuated here after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021. Also goals establish more efficient vetting processes for Afghan allies still located abroad.
The bill would dramatically affect the asylum system, making it harder for migrants to qualify for protection. It has some good intentions, such as faster award of requests for protection, which it often requires years in the current system, but it would require a massive investment of resources to achieve it and the revision of some legal standards, probably at the expense of due process and humanitarian protection.
The bill would create “a new temporary deportation authority” to be used “when the number of migrants exceeds the system,” according to a summary of the package. The Department of Homeland Security would have to close the border “if the average daily migrant encounter reaches 5,000 in a week” or “8,500 in a single day,” which Johnson said he opposes because “the goal should be zero illegal crossings per day.” Ports of entry would “process at least 1,400 migrants per day during periods” when the authority was in use, and migrants would be subject to “a new enhanced asylum standard and removal authority.”
The American Immigration Lawyers Association warned that “fast and truncated procedures” would “undermine the fairness and thoroughness of asylum checks” and put asylum seekers at risk by “repelling them into unsafe and violent conditions.” Immigrant advocacy organizations, including FWD.us and the Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrantscriticized the asylum changes and the bill’s failure to outline a path to citizenship for the country’s undocumented people.
The package would preserve the status quo in some positive ways and in some negative ways. Would be maintain a key measure used by the Biden administration to relieve border pressures: humanitarian parole. President Joe Biden used the authority to establish a legal path of entry for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, which was succeeded in reducing illegal border crossings between those nationalities. But, as did the National Immigration Forum noticedit offers no solutions for Dreamers or the country’s agricultural workforce.
As is usually the case with bills that are too big and too expensive, the border security package would throw money at unprepared agencies in reckless ways. The cash infusion goes far beyond current immigration agency budgets, David J. Bier of the Cato Institute supported, “that it is likely that agencies will have to engage in serious financial mismanagement just to spend it within the required timeframes.” The financing of the package is intended for assume 4,338 nursery school workers, but they don’t belong to anyone Guess How long will it take.
These kinds of lingering questions may never be resolved, given the House’s opposition to the package. Even if the bill passes, lawmakers will have a more difficult task ahead: finding lasting solutions for nearly every level of the U.S. immigration system, from the undocumented people who already call the country home to the highly educated and highly skilled people who have no viable way to migrate and start new lives here.