Migration Hawk Chuck Grassley to Run Senate’s Immigration Committee

Grassley (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press
Neil Munro

Amnesty advocate Sen. Lindsey Graham is giving up his chairmanship of the Senate’s immigration committee to lead the budget panel, as Sen. Chuck Grassley uses his seniority to retake the committee chair.

The planned switch is good news for Americans, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

“If the [judiciary] committee that is in charge of immigration matters is overseen by Grassley, that’s much improved from the perspective of immigration control [advocates], because Grassley is much more hawkish than Graham,” Krikorian told Breitbart. “Graham was part of the Gang of Eight [2013 amnesty], and even if he has changed his spots to Lindsey Graham 2.0, he is still not an immigration hawk in any meaningful way.”

Graham has just won reelection because of a huge turnout of populist voters who oppose Graham’s prior support for amnesty and visa worker giveaways. President Donald Trump’s populist turnout gave Graham 55 percent of the vote, even though Graham’s opponent spent roughly $100 million on the campaign.

Politico reported November 5:

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is set to return to the Senate Judiciary Committee, after giving up the gavel for two years to chair the Finance Committee. The current chairman of Judiciary, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), is presumed to helm the Senate Budget Committee. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), meanwhile, is in line to replace Grassley on Finance while Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) is expected to take over the Banking Committee from Crapo.

The chairmanships are important because the GOP’s Senate caucus is governed by its own unwritten rules, said Krikorian. “The Senate is a club, even today, and much of its work is based on collegiality and mutual dealmaking, so the chairmanship would give Grassley — as a practical matter – a kind of [informal] veto over bad immigration bills” that must pass through the committee before a floor vote, he said.

“It is not an absolute veto: If the Republican leadership was completely committed to passing a bad immigration bill, and if they had a majority of GOP Senators, they could steamroll the chairman … [but it is] not very likely,” he said.

Grassley would still be influential if the GOP loses its Senate majority following the two run-off votes in January, Krikorian said.

Grassley is also a noted critic of the H-1B worker pipelines.

In 2021, Democrats are likely to revive their various amnesty and cheap labor bills.

For example, the Democrats’ coronavirus-emergency bill — the HEROES Act — includes several amnesties for illegals and creates new inflows of foreign healthcare workers.

The H.R. 1044, the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act, would dramatically expand the incentives for college graduate Indian migrants to accept visa worker contracts in the United States.

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