On August 22, the final day of the Democratic National Convention, Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination and made many promises regarding her plans for office. Notably, she promised to bring back the Border Act, stating that “We can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system.”
In February 2024, Senate Majority Leader Schumer proposed the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act with the goal of setting aside almost $120 billion for a variety of issues, including immigration reform, foreign aid, and uranium enrichment. The $20 billion allocated to immigration reform included creating new paths to asylum for Afghans, hiring over 1500 new agents at the border, capping the number of immigrants allowed in each day, and creating more Visas each year for legal immigration.
Effectively, the bill would heighten security at the Southern border while creating more legal pathways to citizenship, something that theoretically both parties could get behind. But it quickly became clear that, despite having the endorsement of minority leader Mitch McConnell, the immigration reform section was so unpopular with Republicans that it would cause the whole bill to fail, so it was removed from the bill and shot down in the Senate. Three months later, when Senators Murphy (D), Sinema (Independent), and Lankford (R) brought the immigration reform provisions of the bill back (with some revisions) as the bipartisan Border Act, it faced even more Republican opposition.
The bill served the interests of both parties, had the endorsement of both senate leaders, the National Border Patrol Council, and the Chamber of Commerce, yet it failed to pass. Why?
The answer is clear, Donald Trump doesn’t want it to. In January 2024, the former president described the proposal as a “horrible open borders betrayal of America.” He intensified his position in February on his Truth Social account, stating that “Only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill, which only gives Shutdown Authority after 5000 Encounters a day, when we already have the right to CLOSE THE BORDER NOW, which must be done.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on May 8, 2024 | ABC News
This is an example of a normative statement. As we covered in class, normative statements are not facts, but rather an opinion on how something should be; they are often defended with facts. In this case, Trump uses a value judgment to determine what should be done, asserting that the border should be closed with even stricter guidelines than outlined in the Border Act. Former president Trump holds considerable sway in the Republican party, and has urged Republicans to reject any bill that isn’t “perfect,” aka a total crackdown on immigration. But to some bystanders, such as Rep. Jamie Raskin, Republicans are blocking the bill on “orders from” Trump.
But proponents of the bill think this reasoning isn’t entirely truthful. Although the American Immigration Lawyers Association describes the bill as “the most extensive border funding and security measures proposed in decades, perhaps ever,” former president Trump remains outwardly skeptical.
Both President Biden and Vice President Harris have accused Republicans of “playing politics with the border” by not passing this bill. Senate Majority Leader Schumer also denounced Trump’s opposition to the bill, telling reporters that “Trump told his MAGA allies to kill it in its tracks so he could exploit the issue on the campaign trail.” And Trump certainly has campaigned on the issue, making border control one of his key promises in past months. On the same day as Harris’ DNC speech, the former president visited the border state of Arizona, promising to “seal the border” and “stop the invasion,” but failing to mention that he has opposed bills funding border security, twice. Although the logistics of this bill have proven contentious in the Senate, both parties can agree that America’s immigration system needs reform.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/whats-in-the-senates-118-billion-border-and-ukraine-deal
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/27/trump-border-biden/
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4415370-trump-cautions-gop-border-deal/
1 comment:
In the case that Harris wins the election and brings the border deal back to the table, it still seems likely to fail. With Trump still maintaining control of his party, and self-identified Republicans standing in blind opposition to the bill, it would remain in many of Congress members best interest to continue to reject the bill. Combined with Republican's good chances at Congress seats this election cycle, it seems history is doomed to repeat itself.
And besides Trump's looming existence (or perhaps because of it), it seems that, more than ever, politics is purely a game of re-election rather than genuine policy-making. Combining the controversy surrounding the questions of border control and immigration with the current polarized state of American politics, there are some Congress members who are denying the bill just because they don't want to appear as if they are handing any sort of win to the Democrats, especially with a Democrat currently in the Oval Office who would likely receive much of the credit for a successful bipartisan immigration reform bill. If their constituents remain avidly against the bill, the Congress members who represent them will continue to reject it. While no one can deny that a comprehensive border solution is necessary, it seems unlikely to be passed any time soon.
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