Pirate's Cove

Too be perfectly honest, I do not want it passed either. Most of the so-called Dreamers do not deserve easy citizenship

Why the Senate’s latest immigration fix is DOA

It’s the end of the year, and Congress is scrambling to get as much done as possible in the lame-duck session. While there are plenty of must-pass pieces of legislation to finish, two senators are trying to whip up support for something that has been impossible in the last decade: immigration reform.

There are pieces in the proposal from Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., that make sense, and on the surface, it’s an example of the kind of bipartisan problem-solving that the Senate all too often eschews these days. It perfectly fits into the Sinema brand of legislation. But once you take a look under the hood, you can see this framework is already in danger of collapsing. Its joints are ill-fitting, and its structure is unsound.

The best part of the proposal would include a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 2 million “Dreamers” who arrived in the U.S. as undocumented children. Democrats have been pursuing such a path for citizenship for the better part of a decade, even more so after the Trump administration nearly axed the Obama-era fix known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

But those Dreamers’ citizenship would come at a cost: an additional $25 billion for border security. NBC News reports that the funding would go toward “higher salaries for border patrol agents, and increased staffing and other resources for border patrol and border protection.”

MSNBC is really telling you what most Democrats think: fuck the border. Just give free citizenship to people brought to the country illegally, making them good little Democratic Party voters. And Republicans are idiots, because even if they get border security measures in the bill, Biden won’t implement them.

The proposal would boost the strained asylum process with much-needed investments in more asylum officers, immigration lawyers and the immigration court system, which has been teetering on the edge of collapse. It would also create “regional processing centers” along the border to ease the bottleneck at ports of entry.

It wouldn’t be if Democrats didn’t create the incentives for people to just stream into the U.S. from around the world and demand asylum, for which few actually qualify. And, of course, Democrats want to get rid of Title 42 and anything that requires people to apply for asylum outside the U.S., with those determinations coming with them somewhere other than U.S. territory.

By themselves, the 21 Democrats who signed that letter could tank the Sinema-Tillis framework in the House. But their opposition wouldn’t even come into play unless Republicans in the House and the Senate alike supported it in the first place. And that seems like a long shot — at best. Sinema and Tillis are reportedly hoping to get enough support in the coming days to include the provision in the must-pass omnibus spending bill that will keep the government open. Even if the proposal makes it into that bill, I predict that we’ll see a mutiny on both sides to strip it out.

Something like this should not be anything but a standalone bill. Just pass a damned clean budget. The question here though, is, will enough Republicans get squishy? That link in the 2nd paragraph of the excerpt goes to the Washington Post (you can read it by opening it then adding cache: right before the https://. It would look like cache:https://wash…..) and notes

• Some form of path to citizenship for 2 million dreamers.
• A large boost in resources to speed up the processing of asylum seekers, including new processing centers and more asylum officers and judges.
• More resources to expedite the removal of migrants who don’t qualify for asylum.
• A continuation of the Title 42 covid-health-rule restriction on migrants applying for asylum, until the new processing centers are operational, with the aim of a one-year cutoff.
• More funding for border officers.

Thom Tillis’ SUCCEED Act, introduced with James Lankford (R-OK) is not that bad, and does not go easy on the “Dreamers”. It doesn’t force them to pay lots of money like all those who did it correctly. It also fails to deal with the notion of what to do with the people who brought them illegally, as I noted back in 2017

Here’s a recommendation: Congress puts DACA into law, but allows 4 year renewals, rather than 2 years, in order to decrease burden on federal agencies. Just like with people who are applying for citizenship, any serious crimes can be cause to cancel an illegals legal status and deport them. And, yes, even DUIs may be considered cause, just like with those applying for citizenship. After 12 years, they can go through the same process as those applying for citizenship in order to attempt to earn full citizenship.

BUT, if we aren’t going to lay the “sins” of the parent(s) on the children, we are going to lay them on the parent(s). In order to obtain DACA status, the parent(s) must self deport, and provide proof at an immigration checkpoint as they leave. They are not allowed back in the United States for 2 years, and then only for a short visit. If they are caught residing in the U.S., or attempting to enter the country illegally, the children will have their DACA status ended and will be deported. After 12 years, they would be allowed to apply for temporary resident status, conditioned on speaking English and having good moral character. This seems fair. The parents broke our laws.

If you don’t agree with punishing the parents, then you’re simply using DACA to create a backdoor amnesty for all.

And the SUCCEED Act fails to stop these Dreamers from bringing in all their relatives. Though, it could take 15 years before the kiddies could apply for naturalization. There’s zero chance most Democrats will go for this.