Border crisis 'about to get a lot worse' with Dems' amnesty plan: Sen. Cotton
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., warns against Democrats pursuing an amnesty plan in their upcoming budget bill that will be a 'bigger magnet for more illegal immigration.'
On his first day in office, President Biden rescinded the proclamation declaring a national emergency at the southern border. Then he cut off funding for the border wall and gutted virtually all Trump-era policies to reduce illegal immigration, including the successful Remain in Mexico policy.
The consequences of Biden's "see no evil" approach to chaos at the border have been predictable. Record numbers of illegal aliens from Central America and elsewhere are now streaming across the border, taking full advantage of the Democrats’ open-border policies.
Last month, Border Patrol agents caught more than 188,000 illegal aliens trying to sneak into our country, the highest number in more than two decades. More than one million illegal aliens have entered already this year, and those are just the ones we know about. Thousands more surely snuck into the country undetected, along with untold amounts of deadly drugs like heroin and fentanyl that are killing our fellow Americans in record numbers.
If the Democrats wanted to stop this rising tide of illegal immigration and drugs, they would reverse course now and call this situation what it is: a national emergency. They would then build the border wall, reinstate the enhanced border protections put in place by the Trump administration, and deport lawbreakers.
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But Democrats aren’t doing anything to stop the crisis they created. Instead, they are throwing fuel on the fire by trying to force a massive amnesty through the Senate by a bare, partisan vote.
Senate Democrats are already plotting to approve $4.1 trillion in spending on liberal priorities via reconciliation, a parliamentary process that allows budget-related matters to bypass the filibuster and become law with only 50 votes. Now they’re trying to use this reckless spending package to grant legal status to millions of illegal aliens, who are taking jobs that could otherwise be filled by American workers.
Democrats aren’t doing anything to stop the crisis they created. Instead, they are throwing fuel on the fire by trying to force a massive amnesty through the Senate by a bare, partisan vote.
Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., said he expects this amnesty to go into effect within "just a couple of months, if all the necessary steps are taken."
That means, before the year is out, Democrats could place millions of people who are here in violation of our laws on a path to citizenship. Such a sweeping amnesty would make a mockery of our laws and encourage millions more foreigners to cross into our country illegally in the expectation that they will be legalized by a future Democratic Congress.
The basic truth about amnesty is that it always creates the conditions for future amnesty. No wonder the Democrats propose a new one every time they seize power in Washington.
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The Democrats’ amnesty ploy is a blatant violation of the rules of the Senate. The budget reconciliation process can only be used for policies primarily related to the federal budget, not policies with no effect or merely a secondary effect on spending.
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Granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens is precisely the kind of sweeping, non-budgetary scheme that is disqualified from this process. But it’s at least amusing to note how the Democrats are trying to justify this policy in a budget package; they are admitting that such an amnesty would have a dramatic and large effect on our welfare system and domestic spending.
On this point, they are correct: this policy would wreak havoc on our social safety net as the world’s poor flood into America for generous, taxpayer-funded benefits. While this is a shocking admission by amnesty advocates, every American knows that the primary purpose of amnesty policies is to provide amnesty, not to increase welfare spending.
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While this amnesty violates the rules of the Senate, we shouldn’t wait for the parliamentarian to save us. Americans need to tell their senators to oppose this liberal ploy, and every Republican needs to fight tooth and nail to stop it.
We need to scuttle the Democrats’ stealth amnesty and send a message loud and clear to Joe Biden: the wide-open southern border is an emergency that harms us all, whether he wants to admit it or not.
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