Biden Moves for Mass Amnesty in First Day as President
Republicans, immigration expert blast bill
President Joe Biden on Wednesday will send legislation to Congress that would offer amnesty and a path to citizenship to the bulk of the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States, teeing up a potentially momentous struggle with Congress.
Biden's proposal would substantially overhaul the immigration system, loosening key restrictions to dramatically increase legal immigration alongside its amnesty provisions. At the same time, it contains only a few gestures at enhanced border security, a sign of the Democratic Party's turn away from the compromise approach that characterized previous immigration reform efforts.
"The amnesty bill that Reagan signed in '86, as well as the two big amnesty bills that failed, in 2007 and the Gang of Eight bill in 2014, all were presented as a grand bargain of amnesty for people who were already established, but enforcement measures to supposedly ensure we wouldn't have to be having another amnesty debate a few years down the road," Mark Krikorian, director of the pro-restriction Center for Immigration Studies, told the Washington Free Beacon. "This bill rejects that concept altogether, and is essentially just an amnesty bill with no enforcement."
Biden cannot grant amnesty at this scale without legislative action. The bill, along with a host of executive orders, including an end to border wall construction and a reverse on the Trump administration's "travel ban," represents a stark about-face from predecessor Donald Trump, reversing an aggressive immigration enforcement regime and cuts to legal immigration. But those changes are unlikely to be popular with Senate Republicans, who have already blasted Biden's proposal.
That could mean a challenge to Biden's legislative agenda straight out of the gate, as the Republican minority in the narrowly divided Senate stalls Biden's proposed changes. That could, in turn, lead to a major first loss for the new president—or, more momentously, an end to the Senate's filibuster.
The core of the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, according to details released by the Biden transition team, is an eight-year path to citizenship for the overwhelming majority of America's estimated 11 million illegal residents. Those who pay taxes and pass criminal and national security background checks would be eligible for temporary protection, which in turn would become eligible for green cards after five years and citizenship three years after that.
Beneficiaries of DACA (640,000 people), Temporary Protected Status (roughly 300,000), and certain farmworkers would be able to obtain green cards immediately. Applicants will need to have been present in the United States as of January 2021, but that requirement can be waived specifically for those deported under the Trump administration who were here for "family unity and other humanitarian purposes."
The bill would offer other dramatic overhauls, substantially loosening immigration restrictions. It would boost visa quotas across all categories, including the diversity visa lottery quota. It would also allow approved family visa beneficiaries to come to the United States and reside temporarily until a green card becomes available, extending residency to nearly 3.5 million people currently in the backlog. And it would end the 3- and 10-year bars on reentering the United States legally if an applicant was previously an illegal resident.
In exchange for these changes, the Biden bill makes few concessions to border security. It pushes for expedited screening at the border, as well as enhanced drug screening equipment. But the only explicit proposal to curb surging illegal immigration is a commitment of $4 billion over four years to the several Central American countries from which many of those immigrants now originate, meant to target the "root causes" of migration.
The lack of enforcement provisions, Krikorian said, makes the measure a band-aid at best on the problem of the country's large illegal resident population.
"That's always the key to any amnesty provision, not whether it legalizes the people who were already here, but what does it propose to do about the people who aren't here yet," Krikorian said. "And there's nothing in this bill that gives me any confidence that we won't have another large, new illegal population at the end of this presidential term."
Biden's executive orders, issued Wednesday, strike a similar tone. In a series of promised reversals of Trump, Biden unwound Trump's interior enforcement executive order, stopped the construction of the border wall, granted Liberians temporary protection from deportation, and reversed Trump's ban on travel from certain countries known to be connected to terrorism.
Even before Biden's swearing in, his immigration plans were met with resistance from congressional Republicans. During confirmation hearings for Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden's tap for secretary of homeland security, Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) challenged the nominee, asking him if he "support[s] mass amnesty—11 million is a very, very large number. Do you support mass amnesty on that scale?"
Mayorkas backed his soon-to-be boss, endorsing the Biden plan. But it has drawn the ire of other Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa).
"I've previously supported immigration proposals that would provide certainty for DACA-eligible individuals and lead to greater border security and morrobust enforcement of our immigration laws," Grassley said in a statement. "But a mass amnesty with no safeguards and no strings attached is a nonstarter. As we've seen before, that approach only encourages further violations of our immigration laws."
This hostility could prove a major challenge to Biden's legislative ambitions. The bill will need the backing of 10 Republican senators to make it past the legislative filibuster, a big lift when even moderates like Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) are firm on controlling illegal immigration.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) has indicated to his caucus that he sees preserving the filibuster as of paramount importance and hopes to cooperate with new majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to pass legislation. But Schumer's commitment to passing the bill could bring about conflict, rather than comity, in the opening days of Biden's term.
Labor Department Cracks Down on Wage Undercutting by Foreign Workers
The Department of Labor will enact new measures to crack down on the undercutting of American wages by foreign workers.
The department announced in a Tuesday press release that it will set new wage rates for foreign workers to prevent potential abuses of the pay scale that undercut American wages. The reform is intended to safeguard job opportunities for American workers, according to the release.
The wage scale for paying foreign workers is too low, the department said, and undermines the wages and employment opportunities of U.S. workers.
"The Department also determined that the existing wage levels were artificially low and provided an opportunity for employers to hire and retain foreign workers at wages well below what their U.S. counterparts earn, creating an incentive to prefer foreign workers to U.S. workers," a Labor Department outline of the new regulation reads. "Existing wage levels [are] … at odds with the statutory scheme and [cause] downward pressure on the wages of the domestic workforce."
Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia said the new labor reforms will cut down on abuse in the foreign worker economy.
"The U.S. Department of Labor is taking these steps to strengthen wage protections, address abuses in visa programs, and protect American workers from being undercut by cheaper foreign labor," Scalia said.
Scalia will likely be succeeded by President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for labor secretary, Marty Walsh. As mayor of Boston, Walsh worked to create a more hospitable environment for foreign workers, passing legislation making Boston a sanctuary city for illegal immigration. In 2018, Walsh ignored pleas from ICE to crack down on his city’s immigration issues.
Scalia’s wage reforms will take effect 60 days after they are published in the Federal Register.
Democrats Push Ahead with Three Alternative Amnesty Strategies
President Joe Biden’s wish list amnesty bill is comatose on arrival, but Democrats are pushing ahead with three alternative amnesty strategies.
Those alternatives are making progress because a handful of GOP Senators may approve Biden’s nominees, and some are talking up partial amnesties, according to a January 23 report in the Wall Street Journal:
“There’s common ground,” said Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.). “The toxic area is when we get into an immigration conversation and suddenly it’s, ’We’re going to begin with every person that’s entered the country…suddenly becomes a legal citizen here, no matter how they came.’ … That’s a bad starting point to say the least.”
In 2017, Lankford told reporters “continual competition in our economy [from illegal immigrants] doesn’t hurt us, that continues to help us. It actually hurts us to put those [illegal immigrant] individuals out of the economy.”
The Associated Press reported January 23 that Sen. Lindsey Graham was talking up an amnesty for some or all of the roughly three million illegals brought to the United States by their parents:
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who’s worked with Democrats on past immigration efforts, said “comprehensive immigration is going to be a tough sale” this year.
“I think the space in a 50-50 Senate will be some kind of DACA deal,” he said.
Some GOP Senators are buckling under pressure from local businesses who want to import more temporary workers instead of hiring Americans. The AP reported:
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a moderate who’s sought earlier immigration compromises, praised parts of Biden’s plan but said she wants changes including more visas for the foreign workers her state’s tourism industry uses heavily.
But GOP leader Mitch McConnell and GOP Senators are pushing back by linking Biden’s amnesty plans to the public’s poll-proven popular demand that Americans’ jobs and wages be given a higher priority than the inflow of more workers and consumers for investors. “Before we deal with immigration, we need to … make sure everyone has the chance to find a good job,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said on January 19. In 2013, Senate Democrats lost five seats after unanimously backing the “Gang of Eight” amnesty.
The Democrats’ first alternative strategy is Senate confirmation of pro-migration Alejandro Mayorakas to run the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The second strategy is an establishment-wide push for passage of several smaller bills that will the same impact as Biden’s wish list amnesty. The third strategy is the removal of the Senate filibuster.
Mayorkas, Biden’s pro-migration nominee, may get a Senate vote this week.
He is likely to get unanimous support from Democrats, despite his long record of corruption, including pressuring agency officials to provide green cards — and citizenship — to Chinese buyers of EB-5 green cards and citizenship. If he gets the DHS job, he is expected to open many regulatory doors in the border — and then defend his open-borders policies from the public by citing his family identity as a refugee from Nazis and Fidel Castro.
Several GOP Senators showed their disapproval of Mayorkas at his January 19 hearing.
But the GOP Senators played up his multiple professional scandals — not his ability to implement Biden’s amnesty via regulations and agency directives. One partial exception was Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who asked Mayorkas if he would allow migrants seeking jobs to get asylum. Mayorkas evaded the question, suggesting to listeners he would allow many job seekers into the United States under the label of asylum seeker:
Johnson: Do you believe coming into this country illegally for economic improvement, is that a valid asylum claim?
Mayorkas: Senator, the asylum laws are well established, and they provide that an individual who’s fleeing persecution by reason of his or her membership in a particular social group is deserving of protection.”
Johnson: Okay, but coming here for economic gain is not a valid asylum claim: Would you agree with that?”
Mayorkas: I believe I articulated the legal theory in it.
“You should never sign off on someone who is corrupt … according to the Inspector General, pretty darn corrupt,” said Rosemary Jenks, the director of government relations at NumbersUSA.
Biden’s deputies have already stopped enforcing deportation laws, she said, adding, “the fact is that these are the people whose constitutional duty is to implement the law as passed by Congress: How is it legal, how is it constitutional for them to come in and say, “Yeah, no, we’re not going to do that, just stop right there.”
Sen. Menendez is the lead advocate in the Senate for Biden's amnesty: He's now begging corporations to threaten & punish GOP legislators who recognize that voters want to protect their jobs from labor migration.
And the amnesty is popular, he insists. https://t.co/cucVyLI5Iq— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) January 22, 2021
The second strategy seeks to pass a series of bills by persuading a different handful of Republicans not to oppose the procedural progress of amnesty or cheap labor bills as they move through the Senate.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), who as the incoming Senate Judiciary Committee chairman is taking the lead on Mr. Biden’s immigration legislation, said that he aims to pass a comprehensive measure but may have to settle for narrow legislation aimed at providing a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants previously in the U.S. without legal authorization.
Business groups are pushing for an amnesty of roughly 5 million migrants who took jobs from Americans in the farm sector, food delivery, transportation, and hospitals. The sectors are deemed “essential” by the federal government’s disaster planners — allowing the business groups and their progressive allies to declare the individual migrants as essential and deserving of citizenship for taking the jobs from Americans.
The Washington Post reported January 23:
A policy like legalizing the dreamers — and possibly people with TPS as well — could conceivably win Republicans. After all, some GOP senators who just won reelection, such as John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, did so while advocating for this, and others, such as Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and James Lankford of Oklahoma, have also backed the idea.
[….]
“If the Senate moved very quickly on a bill fully legalizing dreamers and TPS holders, that would not only defang the nativists, it would make space for progress on thornier issues both through executive action and subsequent legislation,” [Chris] Newman [the legal director at the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said.]
The third strategy emphasizes Senate confrontation and escalation until all Democrats agree to end the filibuster rule that requires 60 votes are needed to advance bills through the multi-stage process.
If all Democrats agree to kill the filibuster, Democrats could ram many bills through Congres with tie-breaking votes from Vice President Kamala Harris. To build internal Democratic support for killing the filibuster, Democrats could push popular tax and spending bills that are deeply opposed by the GOP’s big donors — who also want more immigrant consumers, renters, and workers.
The Washington Post reported January 23:
Bipartisanship is great when it works, so it’s constructive that Brian Deese, the head of the White House’s National Economic Council, is meeting with moderates and moderate conservatives, including Collins and [Sen. Mitt] Romney [R-UT], to try to find common ground.
[…]
Reconciliation rules are largely limited to bills involving money. Eventually, Democrats will have to take on the filibuster itself. They might do this piece by piece if obstruction prevails on particular bills, notably democracy reform efforts.
For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration — or the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.
The multiracial, cross-sex, nonracist, class-based, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and toward immigration in theory — despite the media magnification of many skewed polls and articles that still push the 1950’s “Nation of Immigrants” claim.
Democrats “are not living on the same planet as the rest of us,” said Jenks. “There’s this whole struggle over COVID relief, and they’re going to give amnesty to millions and millions of people, and they’re going to allow more people to come in, and they’re going to increase legal immigration. And these jobs are coming from where?”
Wall St. & CEOs are waving skewed polls (& checks) to urge politicians to jump back into the amnesty waters.
Polls show (& pols know) that voters strongly prefer economic policies to help blue/white-collar Americans get good jobs
IOW, pocketbook politicshttps://t.co/fMtpvV1GYW— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) January 23, 2021
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