The only good news about the Senate’s border deal is that it’s dead on arrival. House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered the eulogy for the legislation that reads like a comedy act in some parts. This bill is the culmination of three months of work on the Hill, and it was total trash. It does nothing to secure the border, and it’s littered with promises, like finishing the border wall, which won’t kick in until the next administration. With the immigration crisis reaching Chernobyl-like levels of urgency concerning impending disaster, no Republican should vote for this bill, even with them knowing its outcome already. There must be united Republican opposition to this monstrosity, and GOP lawmakers who back it should be targeted for primary challenges.
Yes, it’s that bad. We don’t have time to play the usual games of gamesmanship regarding rejecting multiple bills, which ends with Congress coming to some equally terrible agreement weeks or months later. The southern border has been in constant chaos since Grandpa Badfinger—to quote Kurt Schlichter—took office. Joe Biden has refused to rise to the occasion (probably because he would fall), take ownership of the immigration crisis and re-sign every Donald Trump-era executive order that kept the border at its most secure in years.
Biden claims he can’t do anything until Ukraine gets a goodie bag again, which is laughably untrue. The executive has broad powers on border enforcement—it’s a constitutional duty. That also rehashes another reason why Republicans should trash this bill: it’s a foreign aid package disguised as a border security bill.
At $118 billion, only around $20 billion is for border security, which is nothing. $14 billion goes to Israel, and $60 billion is allocated to Ukraine. Does the bill make it easier to reject asylum cases and deport others? Sure, but for every decent measure, there are five that keep the immigration crisis a constant political irritant. That’s by design. We’ll be fronting the bill for legal representation for all migrants caught at the border who are under 13. All children of H-1B visas will be granted permanent residency—protections from deportation for this group usually expire at 21. It adds 250,000 new immigration visas over five years. It rolls out a version of the Afghan Adjustment Act that places all the refugees we transported out of that terrorist haven on a pathway to citizenship. These people are unvetted.
Meanwhile, Democratic senators, like gold bar Bob Menendez, likened the bill to a wish list from the Trump administration because there are some border enforcement measures, though all of them ineffective due to the provisions that are meant to form the backbone of the Democrats’ long-term immigration initiative: mass amnesty.
So, yes, folks on both sides hate the bill. And it’s not going to pass, but Republicans should never trust or deal with an administration and party whose sole goals are mass amnesty, a pathway to citizenship, and open borders. Democrats have no vested interest in having a secure border with a regimented, merit-based immigration system. Their political lifeblood has allowed them to increase their representation on the Hill via new congressional districts through the census for over a generation. Fill the country to the brim with illegals, increase the population, carve out new House seats, and find elected representation that’s of the same racial or ethnic background.
Shame on Senator Mitch McConnell, Senator James Lankford, and other Republicans who thought this would receive a warm reception from base voters. Are they that out of touch? This inability to resolve the crisis is typical swamp creature nonsense, one that’s indicative of the political class that also doesn’t want to solve the border issues, seeing illegals as either new voters or an endless supply of cheap labor.
It’s why someone like Trump can enter the political scene and win a presidential election.