Border bill would keep invasion going

By Joe Guzzardi
Syndicated columnist

An Associated Press story that three of its leading reporters contributed to is a grand example of journalists not seeing the forest for the trees. Colleen Long, Zeke Miller and Seung Min Kim, whose titles, respectively, are White House law enforcement and legal affairs correspondent, chief White House correspondent, and White House reporter, teamed up to write “Biden Determined to Use Stunning Trump-backed Collapse of Border Deal as a Weapon in 2024 Campaign.”

The story’s gist about the collapsed Senate border deal does not address the most crucial point: Would the bill fulfill its stated purpose of securing the border? 

While President Joe Biden moved forward on his never-ending quest to seek additional funding for Ukraine, he gambled that as part of the same package he could satisfy Americans’ demand that he secures the U.S.-Mexico border. In his press release, Biden wrote that the bill “includes the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades. I strongly support it. It will make our country safer, make our border more secure.”

Naturally, Biden’s take away would be positive. The deal was negotiated by two Democrats, Arizona’s faux Independent Kyrsten Sinema, who caucuses with Democrats, deep blue Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, and one Republican sacrificial lamb, Oklahoma’s James Lankford, whose home state is safely 600 miles away from Eagle Pass, the landing point for thousands of arriving illegal aliens. 

A more appropriate choice to join the negotiating team would have been Texas’ Ted Cruz or Florida’s Marco Rubio, whose constituents are under siege. 

The bill had input from impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), two Biden confidants. In his 35 years in Congress, Schumer has unfailingly voted against border and interior enforcement as well as in favor of more liberal asylum standards and increased annual refugee ceilings.

Critics, including former President Donald Trump, insisted that the bill was hurtful for the homeland, and did nothing to secure the border, but instead assured that illegal crossings would persist, and that many illegal aliens would continue to get affirmative benefits. At a rally in Nevada, after solidifying his position as the far and away GOP front-runner, Trump made his feelings known. “As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible open border betrayal of America. I’ll fight it all the way.” 

Then he added, “A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s OK. Please blame it on me. Please.” Trump’s statement provided Biden with the fodder he intends to use during the intense summer campaigning months. Again, Trump’s position, like Biden’s, is predictable. He knows that immigration is voters’ top concern, and his statement plays to his base.

The bill cannot be both “the toughest and fairest set of border reforms in decades,” and “an open borders betrayal of America.” AP should have focused on Biden and Trump’s disparate views on the immigration bill, S. Amdt.1388 to H.R. 815, and delved into whether the bill is bad, as the former president claimed, or whether the incumbent is on solid footing when he insisted that the bill provided the solution to the border crisis. 

Digging into the bill’s weeds would be challenging for AP since the senators’ proposed 400 pages long legislation was written with typical congressional obfuscation. Immigration law is tough for laymen to grasp, especially four hundred pages of it.

AP missed an opportunity to reach out to legal experts to help answer the straightforward question: is the Senate bill good or bad for the nation? Nolan Rappaport, a Democrat who opines in “The Hill” has excellent credentials. For three years, Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert and subsequently served a four-year period as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims. Before working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years. Rappaport’s summary of the amendment was concise: “The Border Act would not secure the border. Among other weaknesses, it fails to provide a solution to the most serious problem, which is that Biden has released so many asylum seekers into the country that our asylum system has broken.”

Another professional legal opinion came from the Center for Immigration Studies’ Andrew Arthur whose 20 year-plus career includes a period as Counsel on the House Judiciary Committee where he performed oversight of immigration issues. After five years at the House Judiciary, he was appointed to the immigration bench, serving for eight years as an Immigration Judge. Arthur reached the same conclusion as Rappaport: “the bill fails to close the vast majority of loopholes smugglers have been exploiting for a decade to move illegal migrants (and migrant families and children, in particular) into the United States. Worse, it codifies some of them.” Among the loopholes Arthur referred to were “the low “credible fear” standard for border migrants seeking asylum.” 

In short, the amendment would legalize border chaos by allowing up to 5,000 illegal entries per day, potentially 1.85 million illegal aliens annually, before border closure is required. The border closure guidelines are time-limited, however, and the untrustworthy Biden and Mayorkas have the discretion to determine how and when to use the authority provided. 

Biden does not need legislative action to close the border, and the administration’s support of the bill, which the Senate rejected, is an open admission of its failures. The proposed cap of 5,000 illegal entries per day proves that Biden could close the border to illegal aliens in an instant if he had the will to do it. 

The border solution that Americans want is to enforce existing immigration laws; no new legislation required.

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has been writing about immigration for more than 30 years. 

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