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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy shored up the votes to pass a sweeping immigration and border security bill after hiccups over the package’s E-Verify and cartel provisions.
The bill passed 219 to 213 on Thursday – the same day as Title 42, the Covid-era public health rule that allows for immediate expulsion, expires.
The House package would bring back a number of Trump-era immigration policies – including Remain in Mexico, which requires those claiming asylum to wait in Mexico while their U.S. asylum claim is processed.
President Biden has already promised to veto the legislation, though he won’t get the opportunity to as it will not come up in the Democrat-led Senate.
The House-passed bill would also resume construction of the southern border wall, make it easier for minors who cross without their parents to be deported and allow for migrant families to be held in detention for a longer period of time, in hopes of ending ‘catch and release’ policies.
The legislation passed on the day Title 42 expired – a pandemic-era policy that made it easier for migrants to be expelled. Border officials have faced 10,000 immigrants per day attempting to cross over the past three days, a record number.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection currently has about 26,000 migrants in custody amid a rush to process the arrivals, several thousand over capacity.
A family of migrants awaits to be put on to a bus after attempting to cross the border in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Thursday
Border Patrol officers and the Department of Public Safety gather migrants who are trying to cross the border in Eagle Pass, Texas, on May 11
The bill would end Biden’s use of humanitarian parole targeted directly at certain nationalities, which the administration uses broadly for Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans and Nicaraguans. It would make the use of E-Verify for hiring employees mandatory and only allow asylum claims to be accepted for those who do not cross the border illegally.
It would also restrict federal funds for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that support migrants at the border direct more money for border security technology and hiring more border agents. The bill mandates expanded collection of biometric and DNA collection of migrants and imposes new fees on asylum applicants.
House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark’s office sent around a notice ahead of hte vote dubbing the bill the ‘Child Deportation Act’ and urging rank-and-file to vote ‘no.’
She said it will make it ‘nearly impossible’ for asylum seekers to get across ports of entry while ‘doing nothing’ to stop the slow of fentanyl across the border.
She said the E-Verify provision on U.S. businesses nationwide ‘would result in chaos in the agriculture industry and seasonal workforces.’
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Libertarian and agrarian-minded Republicans like Reps. David Valadao, R-Calif., and Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., expressed concerns about the effect of mandating E-Verify to check workers’ immigration statuses would have on farming and the nation’s food supply.
An estimated 10,000 migrants headed to the southern border Thursday
Border officials are overwhelmed with the amount of migrants crossing the border illegally in anticipation of the end of Title 42
Newhouse said he would vote for the legislation after ‘many discussions with House leadership’ and securing a concession that if a final border bill were ever sent to President Biden’s desk it would include tweaks that reform the H-2A agricultural visa that remove requirements that it only be for seasonal work and offer wage reform to make sure H-2A wages are ‘more market-based.’
The bill was also amended to change foreign terrorist language after Rep. Dan Crenshaw warned that the provision – which calls on President Biden to designate cartels as foreign terrorists – would only give migrants greater standing to claim asylum.
The Texas Republican has said the bill does not do enough to go after cartels in other ways.
House leadership was eager to push through the party-line bill that will not pass the Senate on the day Title 42 expires. Border officials have expected an onslaught of migrants to rush the border without the pandemic-era public health policy that allows for immediate expulsion.
‘What Republicans are bringing onto the floor this week is not substantive. It’s extreme and recycles the same failed policies from the prior administration that did nothing to help our situation at the southern border,’ Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California said in a press conference.
Meanwhile House Democrats unveiled their own immigration and border proposal on Wednesday – the U.S. Citizenship Act.
In the Senate, Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin promised to release a ‘bipartisan’ immigration bill on Thursday.
‘House Republicans’ ‘proposal’ to our immigration challenge isn’t serious. It’s a partisan nonstarter. We’ve delivered bipartisan immigration reform before – and we need to do it again. I’m putting forward a bill – a serious proposal – tomorrow to get us started,’ he tweeted.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
