Well, that wasn’t worth the wait.
We’re talking, of course, of the months-in-the-making Senate “compromise” on border/migrant/asylum policy that was supposed to include major Democratic concessions as the price of OK’ing aid for Ukraine and Israel.
Instead, the plan is basically cover for President Biden — retroactively authorizing many of the policies he invented to speed the influx, while also giving him an excuse for why he hasn’t done squat to stem the tide.
The central problem: It doesn’t force Biden to close the border to “asylum seekers” unless they’re crossing by more than 5,000 a day, and only “allows” him to invoke this supposedly new authority at 4,000 a day.
And even then, it forces the border to reopen after 270 days in the first year, and less in the following ones — plainly an effort to handcuff the next prez, should Biden lose this fall.
It supposedly ends “catch and release,” the practice wherein the Border Patrol apprehends an illegal border-crosser, then waves them along.
But that’s already contrary to law; why would a fresh ban change anything?
It also mandates significant “asylum-seeker” admissions, and (impossibly) orders a massive speedup of asylum processing so the current yearslong backup becomes a six-month turnaround.
As if the federal government ever magically met a congressional demand to “work faster.”
Oh, and it automatically grants work permits for every “asylum seeker” it does let in, making illegal immigration even more attractive.
Yes, there’s some decent stuff — action on fentanyl, higher standards of proof for asylum claims, etc.
But the simple fact is that the Republican negotiators got taken.
Kudos to Sen. Chuck Schumer for that “success,” but it only guarantees that the plan is what Speaker Mike Johnson already declared: dead on arrival in the House, if it even makes it out of the Senate.
All the negotiators have done is make fools out of everyone who hoped they just might solve anything.