Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) has caved to the bipartisan immigration framework that would reward illegal immigration and only encourage more foreign graduates to take jobs from American graduates.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will travel to the White House on Wednesday to discuss Ukraine aid and a potential border deal.
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) has led negotiations for Republicans over a potential deal with Democrats on border policy. However, the deal, as currently presented, is functionally dead in the House, as Johnson has nixed any potential consideration of the bill. Instead, Johnson has said that the House must consider the House Republican-passed border bill, H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act.
Senate Republican leadership has pushed back on Johnson’s argument, believing now is the time for a border bill. Cornyn has said Republicans have to exploit the “unique leverage” that is the Democrat desire for more Ukraine aid.
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“[We have] unique leverage because of the Ukraine funding. Even when we had the majority in the House, the Senate and the White House, we still couldn’t get 60 votes for some of the things that Sen. Lankford is negotiating on now,” Cornyn explained to Punchbowl News.
Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD) said, “There is absolutely no way that we would get the kind of border policy that’s being talked about right now with a Republican majority in the Senate…”
“This is a unique moment in time. It’s an opportunity to get some really conservative border [policies] that we haven’t been able to get for 40 years,” he added.
Breitbart News’s Neil Munro reported about how there are few provisions in the Lankford-led immigration proposal to limit immigration.
“There’s nothing in there that [restricts immigration], in fact, it’s just going to encourage more people to come,” said Chris Chmielenski, president of the Immigration Accountability Project.
Chimielenski continued, detailing the framework:
Border deal would:
1) Increase green cards by 50,000/year
2) Work permits for adult children of H-1B holders
3) Immediate work permits to every illegal alien released from custody
4) Taxpayer funded lawyers to certain UACs and mentally incompetent aliens
5) Expulsion authority for a limited number of days ONLY if encounters exceed 5k/day over a seven day period
6) Restricts parole for those who enter without authorization between ports of entry
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said the deal is a “sellout” and argued it would “continue to allow illegal immigration:”
It’s saying, “Oh, we’ll let 5,000 people come illegally a day, and then after that, we might try to stop the next 5,000 that day.” It’s completely a sellout.
But it’s because people like Senator [Mitch] McConnell care more about Ukraine than anything else — more than the border, more than anything else. He wants to send $60 billion of your money to Ukraine. On this issue, he is more aligned with Biden. On the issue of funding, of sending your money to Ukraine and sending it everywhere around the world, McConnell is much more closely aligned with Biden than he is with the Republican Party.
A Wall Street Journal poll released ahead of the Iowa Caucus found that 59 percent of Iowa registered voters believe that immigration is the most important issue facing the country.
Sixty percent of said voters believe that immigration in the U.S. generally do more to hurt the country, compared to 46 percent who think they generally do more to help the country.
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
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