Katie Britt won the Alabama GOP Senate primary runoff last night, and one of the main issues she ran on was immigration. Britt has endorsed Senator Tom Cotton’s 2017 RAISE Act, which was a plan to decrease legal immigration by 50 percent. Britt is not the only Republican Senate candidate to come out in favor of stricter immigration policies. Blake Masters, running for the GOP nomination in the Arizona Senate race, wants to triple the size of the Border Patrol, wants to finish the border wall, and opposes all amnesty for illegal aliens. While he has espoused liberal immigration policies in the past, he now pledges to “end illegal immigration.”
The winner of the Ohio GOP Senate primary, J. D. Vance, is focusing part of his campaign on illegal immigration, promising changes similar to Masters’s. Yet Vance goes a step further, seeking to overhaul the current legal immigration system: “Millions of people want to come here, and we should only allow them if they contribute something meaningful to our country.” Vance wants to curb the number of legal immigrants coming into the country, prioritizing skilled immigrants. In one of his primary-campaign ads, called, “Are You a Racist?,” Vance said, “Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” These Republicans clearly believe immigration is an issue that can drive voters to the polls, even in an election year dominated by inflation and other economic concerns. The RAISE Act, endorsed by Katie Britt, was a plan pushed by Senator Cotton and former Georgia senator David Perdue in 2017. The bill, reintroduced in 2019 by Cotton and Perdue as well as Senator Josh Hawley (R, Mo.), was pitched as a way to boost job and wage growth, end chain migration, and welcome the highest-skilled immigrants to the country. The Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act would cut the number of green cards issued on an annual basis from 1 million to 500,000. Until recently, Republicans generally maintained a position on immigration that illegal immigration needs to be halted, but legal immigration is good and should be encouraged. And after Mitt Romney lost the presidential election to Barack Obama in 2012, Republicans believed that in order to cater to the Hispanic vote, they would have to move their immigration stance to the left. Some, including former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), endorsed amnesty for some illegal immigrants. Even the staunchly pro-Trump Fox host Sean Hannity suggested in 2012 that some law-abiding illegal immigrants should be granted citizenship. Donald Trump’s clinching of the nomination in 2016 and the ascent of populism within the GOP pushed immigration restrictionism to the forefront of Republican politics. Trump campaigned on building a wall on the southern border and deporting illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration, Trump maintained, undermines the American workforce by taking American jobs and lowering wages for native-born Americans. Fair Comments on Rule Designed to Encourage More Illegal Immigration and Fraudulent Asylum Claims6/1/2022
WASHINGTON, June 1, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Yesterday the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) submitted a public comment in response to an interim final rule (IFR) that is explicitly designed to facilitate the release of asylum seekers at our southern border, many of whom submit fraudulent or frivolous claims.
The Biden administration proposed a new regulation in 2021 to allow asylum officers – the most open borders contingency in the federal government – to grant full and immediate asylum at the southern border. The goal is to circumvent immigration courts so asylum officers can get to "yes" under the rules the Biden administration has written, instead of the law. In response, FAIR filed a public comment urging them to rescind the proposed rule, and instead implement reforms that will actually discourage illegal immigration into the United States, remove incentives to submit fraudulent or frivolous asylum claims, and regain order at the southern border. They didn't listen. Instead, the Biden administration issued an interim final rule with little deviation from their goal to allow in as many illegal aliens as possible under the guise of legality. "Under the Biden administration, illegal immigration has soared to levels not seen in decades. Asylum abuse is rampant as the administration has shown minimal effort to protect the integrity of our legal immigration system. Instead, by proposing rules like this, they are clearly trying to dismantle immigration enforcement at the border in its entirety," charged Dan Stein, president of FAIR. Nascent immigration talks are colliding with election-year politics over the border, a significant hurdle to chances of a deal.
Advocates say they are willing to give Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) broad leeway as he looks to revive bipartisan talks. And, they argue, there are incentives for Congress to capture the long sought legislative white whale now amid multiple court fights, including on a key Obama-era program, and the threat of a GOP-controlled House starting in 2023. But there are also tripwires that could scuttle already uphill chances of an agreement: Several Democrats are wary of the administration’s actions on the border. And Republicans view immigration as a key campaign attack heading into November. “The politics of immigration right now … and the politicization of the border issues, it’s just, from my point of view, it’s poisoned the well to work cooperatively,” said Douglas Rivlin, the director of communications for America’s Voice. Trying to get a deal on immigration has proven to be a heavy lift even in non-election years. A 2013 effort, which included a pathway to citizenship, passed the Senate only to stall in a GOP-controlled House. A 2018 attempt, which took place early in the calendar year, fell apart after the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) came out hard against a bipartisan group’s proposal that would have provided $25 billion for the border wall. Immigration has also emerged as a lightning rod issue for Republicans, as many in the party have followed Trump’s shift to the hard right on the issue. To try to avoid traps that have quickly snared previous talks, Durbin indicated that he would ask senators to pitch bills that they’ve already introduced that have bipartisan support. “We want to sit at a table and ask members who have immigration, bipartisan immigration bills, to come and propose those bills to us and see if we can build a 60-vote plus margin for a group of bills. It may not be possible, but I think it is,” Durbin told The Hill. Durbin’s staff is in touch with Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) staff. Durbin also pointed to legislation from Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) to prevent the deportation of undocumented immigrants who served honorably in the military. |