Senate border deal mostly about preserving Joe Biden’s ‘new normal’

After weeks of secretive bipartisan negotiations, the Senate border deal proposal is out and, well, it’s got a lot of compromise.

According to Politico:

Senators in both parties have finalized a deal on stricter border and immigration policies that is headed toward an uncertain floor vote in the coming days.

The $118 billion agreement, which was released Sunday afternoon and negotiated for months, would tighten the standard for migrants to receive asylum, automatically shut down the southern border to illegal crossings if migrant encounters hit certain daily benchmarks and send billions of dollars to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as well as the border.

Actually, it’s only stricter in some areas, and only contingent on having personnel willing to follow the law as written her than use their activist ‘discretion’ to wave every applicant through. Even Joe Biden can waive the whole thing for whatever he deems ‘an emergency.’ 

Bill Melugin at Fox News has some preliminary dissections of what the bill contains:

NEW: My initial highlights from the border deal.

– No amnesty/legalization of anyone already in the U.S. illegally.

– Funds an increase in ICE detention capacity to approx. 50,000 from the current 34,000.

– At 7 day rolling average of 5,000 encounters per day, or 8,500…

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) February 5, 2024

The problem with quotas based on moving averages and all that is that it still violates the law, given that only Congress is authorized by the Constitution to set immigration quotas. The law itself will set new quotas, but only based on Joe Biden’s “new normal” in open borders admissions. As Melugin observes, they already are getting about 5,000 illegal crossings a day so all this new 4,999 law would do is normalize that number rather than presumably letting it get bigger, which it will do.

One can only imagine the cartels of Mexico reading this new quota system and either divvying up the numbers and proceeds they make from illegal crossings, or more likely, battling it out amongst each other for their share of the 4,999 quota. And once again, that’s if the BIden administration actually follows those quotas. No mention of what happens if he doesn’t nor how they count ‘gotaways,’ particularly since, as far as I can tell, there are no measures to repair and strengthen the border wall.

They call it catch and deport rather than catch and release, but some groups will escape from that designation anyway — unaccompanied minors, meaning, gang-aged youth, and “families” whether DNA-tested or not. There should be plenty of fraud on both fronts, given the impossibility of verifying whether such illegal crossers really are underaged youth or family units. Nobody, of course, will have papers, and the gang-aged “youth,” trafficked kids, and toddlers flung over the wall will get free government-paid asylum lawyers to ensure they can stay here in the states instead of be sent back. Cartels will take note and adjust their plans accordingly. The incentive will remain to ship unaccompanied minors over illegally.

As for tough new standards on asylum applicants, well, as I said earlier, it’s in the hands of so-called “asylum officers” to likely be hired from the open-borders activist community rather than immigration judges trained in immigration law. Any tough standards there and penalties for failing to heed the law or overusing ‘discretion’? Any penalties for letting predators in who will prey on Americans? None that I can see. Soung auspicious?

Verifying criminal records, which is one disqualifier, seems a little skeevy with migrants rolling in from places like the Democratic Republic of Congo or Venezuela, the latter of which has emptied its jails precisely to inflict its criminals upon the U.S. Anybody expect them to cooperate? They’re already threatening to not take their own migrants back because the U.S. has sanctions on the drug dealers in their leadership. Scratch any effectiveness about keeping criminals out from that quarter.

A related problem is that certain nationalities are exempted from the tougher asylum requirements, such as Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans and Nicaraguans. There is no doubt that a lot of those people should qualify for asylum, but sorting them out seems just about impossible. For example, Jhoan Boada, the charmer who beat the New York police officers and then flashed the double-middle finger to the cameras as he was exiting the New York courthouse on zero bail — would be in the asylum-worthy category and not be sent back. Sound like a good idea to be importing more of him?

Lastly, the cash shovel-out to NGOs seems problematic, given the role of NGOs in encouraging illegal immigration and fostering it forward with road maps, advice on how to get here, free bus rides in and the like. NGOs are probably the biggest problem in the encouragement of open borders, being an interest group with cash interests in more illegal migrants coming in, so that issue is only going to incentivize more illegal immigration.

There are counter-arguments, such as this one presented by Daniel Di Martino here,

Stay tuned. Reading the Senate Border Deal and will explain the immigration provisions below ⬇️

— Daniel Di Martino ???????????????? (@DanielDiMartino) February 4, 2024

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Some important points he makes is that the new law would strip out lots of garbage already in the tangle of immigration laws, such as illogical restrictions on family visits and extended asylum court cases, and that Democrats will probably never vote ‘yes’ on another bill except this one, so it may be the only chance.

But on the whole, the border bill has just a little too much compromise, normalizing the situation as we have now and ignoring that we already have a legal process for entering the U.S., which could be made easier instead of accommodating some ‘acceptable’ level of illegal immigration and expanding Joe Biden’s power.

The other thing is that BIden can shut down the border right now if he wants to — he just doesn’t want to. That leaves the border mess on him and the possibiolity of changing America’s leadership possibly the best option on the table. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson says the bill is a non-starter. Perhaps putting more restrictions on Biden rather than the illegal border crossers will make it more palatable. I’m not going to 100% say that this bill is a nonstarter, but on the whole, it looks like a bad bill, and bad bills are worse than no bills, as President Trump has stated.

Image: Twitter screen shot