On Sunday afternoon, Senate leaders unveiled an immigration bill in response to the border crisis that has burned for years. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said he wants to hold the first votes on Wednesday, but Republican leaders in the House of Representatives say the bill will never get a vote in the House.
Two main obstacles stand in the way of this bill’s passage.
The first is that former President Donald Trump has indicated he would rather have nothing pass — likely because he thinks Biden’s border crisis is a good election-year issue for him.
The second obstacle is that congressional Republicans do not trust the Biden administration to enforce new laws, given the history of immigration policy from the Biden and Obama administrations.
The bill’s champions have waved away the substantive objections as fact-free. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said on Sunday morning television a week ago, “Right now there’s internet rumors is all that people are running on.”
That points to the problem: Why did Lankford’s fellow lawmakers not see the bill until yesterday? Why was it negotiated in secret, behind closed doors?
If your reaction is, “that’s how deals are made on Capitol Hill,” then you’ve forgotten about an old idea that used to hold sway, especially in the U.S. Senate: deliberation. Deliberation generally includes debate, hearings, amendments, and votes.
I understand this idea is a bit outdated. For the past 15 years, it has been perfectly normal for congressional leaders to negotiate a bill behind closed doors and drop it in front of both chambers, saying that only obstructionists would call for more debate or for amendment.
And in that environment, it has become more normal for insurgents — and now House leaders — to refuse to even entertain such legislation.
But there’s a healthier way to do this. News reports say that bipartisan lawmakers have been hacking out a bill to address the border crisis for weeks. They could have done this in the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Government Affairs, which exists exactly for this purpose.
The committee should hold hearings in which they could ask all sorts of questions, both of the Biden administration and of the senators who have written the first draft.
What does shutting down the border actually mean?
Would Biden use his prosecutorial discretion to just ignore the law? Should the law strip the administration of discretion on border enforcement?
Here’s an important question raised by Fox reporter Bill Melugin: “It appears that the legislation would move asylum claim decisions away from immigration judges, and instead have them be handled by USCIS.”
That’s a brand new thing! And it’s unclear! Let’s debate, ask questions, and maybe tweak that!
The bill also provides $1.4 billion in FEMA funding for cities, towns, and nonprofit organizations. Is this just more slush money for left-wing groups, as it was in the recent “permitting reform” bill?
And there are many worthwhile questions to ask Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Given that he testified under oath that the border was “secure” and swore that we had “operational control” of the border, any member of Congress is justified in wondering whether the administration really means it when the administration says it wants to reduce the flow of illegal immigrants.
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A real deliberative process would also allow for amendments, in committee and in the full Senate. Amendment processes not only allow lawmakers to make a bill more agreeable, they also let a lawmaker give his ideas a fighting chance — which makes him more likely to go along with an imperfect bill.
Republicans who say they would never support this bill should instead say that they would need to seriously amend it. That would require a Senate leadership willing to follow an actual legislative process.
