Senate Border Security ‘Compromise’ Bill Crashes and Burns After FAIR Exposed It as a Sham
It took a handful of senators – meeting in secret for months – to craft what they billed as a bipartisan plan to secure our borders and halt mass illegal immigration. It took three days for the plan to go down in flames, as FAIR and others exposed that it was not a border enforcement bill at all. The only thing that was compromised in the bill’s 370 pages were the interests and security of the American people.
The closely-guarded bill was released late on Sunday evening, February 4. FAIR’s government relations team quickly divvied it up and read through it, section by section. What jumped out immediately was that the Senate border package would not secure our borders. Rather than offering real policy changes to stop the border crisis, the bill actually codified catch-and-release policies that encourage asylum abuse and was packed with giveaways to open-borders advocates.
First, the bill would have created an asylum system that requires all migrants to be released by simply claiming asylum (i.e. released before they are screened by an asylum officer) – codifying the Biden administration’s catch-and-release policies already in place. The bill also offered asylum-seekers work permits almost immediately, creating even greater incentive for economic migrants to engage in asylum fraud.
Second, the so-called enforcement provisions would have expired after three years and were riddled with exceptions and loopholes. Under the bill, the president would not have been required to expel illegal migrants until border encounters reached 5,000 a day over a seven-day period – essentially setting illegal entries of 1.825 million people a year as an acceptable level. But even that provision included broad exceptions. Aliens seeking asylum or parole at ports of entry, unaccompanied minors, and trafficking victims would have all been exempted from automatic expulsion, as well as any aliens the government feels should be exempted for operational reasons or “the totality of the circumstances.”
The Senate plan also failed to end the Biden administration’s flagrant abuse of parole authority, under which they have allowed hundreds of thousands of otherwise inadmissible aliens to enter the country. In several places, the bill stated that nothing in the legislative language should be construed to expand or narrow the parole powers already in the statute.
Finally, the bill contained giveaways for open-borders advocates and special interests. It expanded legal immigration by adding 50,000 green cards every year for five years. It also granted work permits to the spouses and children of H-1B workers, allowed adult children of H-1B workers to obtain green cards essentially as dependents, legalized Afghan parolees, and spent billions in taxpayer funding for NGOs to facilitate illegal immigration.
FAIR quickly disseminated our legislative analysis to Senate offices that had been left in the dark as the backroom deal hammered out by Senators James Lankford (R-Okla.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) was set for a vote only three days later. Additionally, FAIR’s analysis was also circulated to news media outlets all across the country in order to rebut the false assertions that this was a sincere effort to control the border and halt mass illegal immigration.
By the time the Senate voted the verdict was in. In a procedural motion to take up the bill, the ‘compromise’ not only failed to garner the 60 votes needed to move forward, it did not even win a simple majority, failing 50-49.
While the sham bill was quickly defeated, it also represented a missed opportunity to pass real border security and immigration enforcement legislation, like H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, which was passed by the House last May. FAIR will continue to advocate for inclusion of H.R. 2 in other must-pass legislation that comes up throughout the remainder of this year.