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A NEW DEMOCRATIC IMMIGRATION PLOY. The drive to enact “comprehensive immigration reform” has failed repeatedly over the years. The failed proposals have always included provisions to offer permanent legal status and a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million people in the United States illegally. Such measures, denounced by opponents as “amnesty,” have never become law.
Now Democrats have come up with a new plan. They have already come up with a huge, $3.5 trillion plan to pack most of their legislative agenda into one bill. It all grew out of the “infrastructure” argument in which Democrats sought to re-define “infrastructure,” understood by most people to mean roads, bridges, airports, etc., to include things like home health care and free college.
Because Republicans balked at that re-definition, lawmakers devised a plan to craft a separate, bipartisan proposal that covers actual infrastructure, while Democrats threw all the other stuff into a giant bill that they would attempt to pass in the Senate with just 50 votes, plus Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote, under the process known as “reconciliation.” Reconciliation bars opponents from using the filibuster on a limited number of budget proposals that have significant fiscal impact. The problem is that the Senate parliamentarian has the authority to interpret the rules on which measures qualify to be allowed through under reconciliation, and which don’t.
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That’s where immigration comes in. News reports in recent days suggest Senate Democrats are planning to include an amnesty measure in the massive spending bill — just throw it in there and see if the parliamentarian will allow it to stay. “The goal is to stuff the language into a huge measure this fall financing many of President Joe Biden’s priorities that would be shielded from a Republican Senate filibuster,” the Associated Press reports.
Politico Playbook was a bit more blunt, calling the Democratic plan a “gambit to back-door immigration reform through the reconciliation process.”
It’s a jaw-dropping idea. Democrats do not even control a majority of seats in the Senate — it is tied, 50-50 — and they have come up with a scheme to slip through one of the most contentious measures ever, one that has failed repeatedly in the past, even when the party had a real majority.
Can it work? Will it work? “This might turn out to be more of a kamikaze act than a D-Day event,” said Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter restrictions on immigration, in an email exchange. “Any reasonable person would have to agree that it doesn’t meet the standards for a budget reconciliation bill; clearly, the budgetary implications are incidental to the point of the amnesty, and, if anything, there will be negative fiscal effects.” Besides, Vaughan continued, “it’s not appropriate — and downright cowardly — to try to enact things that have majority economic, security, and social implications through the reconciliation process.”
The bottom line is, it should not work. But that doesn’t mean it won’t. And if it does, how many people would be affected? Some Democrats have suggested they won’t try to legalize all 12 million people illegally present in the U.S., but will instead cover a much smaller group — perhaps five million. Vaughan doesn’t buy it. “We can be sure that Democrats will downplay the numbers, but they are huge,” she said, “possible as many as ten million people will get amnesty, depending on the language. That’s unprecedented. Even a smaller amnesty of, say, three million has major implications, because of the chain migration that will follow.”
And then there is the amazing fact that Democrats are considering an immigration ploy — some are calling it a “Hail Mary” attempt — at a time when the U.S.-Mexico border is overwhelmed with people crossing illegally into the United States. Word that Democrats are considering an amnesty gambit will be one more incentive for them to come — and they have surely heard of it even as we speak.
“It’s so obvious, but the Democrats seem oblivious to the optics of pushing this at a time when the border is out of control,” Vaughan said. “We know from experience that even talk of an amnesty causes a surge of illegal migrants to the border. Voters seem to have little confidence that the Biden team can manage the border competently and securely, much less manage another mass government giveaway of green cards.”
Like other parts of the Democratic agenda — look at S. 1, the voting bill — the immigration proposal, which doesn’t even exist on paper yet, is an exercise in messaging. Go big, go long, show your progressive constituency groups that you’re fighting for them. If it doesn’t happen, they can see you tried. And who knows? Maybe it will work.
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