House Democrats passed a pair of massive new immigration bills late last week that would extend amnesty to some 4 million individuals who are in the country illegally.
But as the Washington Examiner reported on Sunday, there’s significant doubt, even among Democrats, that the legislation will survive the evenly-divided Senate.
According to the Examiner, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) has indicated that he will schedule hearings on the bill, but expressed uncertainty over whether he could obtain a 60-vote, filibuster-proof margin.
“Total mayhem”
“I don’t see a means of reaching it,” Durbin told reporters Thursday. “I want it. I think we’re much more likely to deal with discrete elements.”
The legislation has already faced significant opposition in the House, with Republicans alleging that the Democrats’ talk of amnesty has helped fuel a crisis on the southern border.
“Border Patrol agents say it is total mayhem,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) complained from the House floor on Thursday afternoon, according to the Examiner.
“This is insane”
Breitbart alleged in a report published Sunday that the number of people crossing the border has grown to such an extent that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has begun releasing migrants into the country without giving them a court date.
“This is insane, it is another pull factor that will overwhelm us,” an anonymous CBP official who works in the Rio Grande Valley area in Texas told Breitbart.
“We are creating another entirely different class of aliens we will have to deal with years from now. We will never find most of these aliens once they are released,” the unnamed official predicted. “We may be reducing the time it takes to release a family unit but if we encourage more to come once they find out it is quicker here, we’ll be in the same boat again.”
“We have a crisis”
Fox News also reported that Democrats stymied a proposal from newly elected Iowa Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) that would have required migrants to first test negative for COVID-19 before they could be allowed into the United States.
“I was at the border yesterday,” Miller-Meeks declared in a tweet on March 16.
“We have a crisis that must be addressed,” she said.
The post Twin immigration bills giving amnesty to 4 million face uphill battle in the Senate first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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