Immigration Update: The Senate Bill

Fixing the asylum process

Last week I wrote about Congress’ inability to do the hard work of governing necessary to address problems at the Southern Border. Some of that failure rests on what Republicans embrace as a weapon against any Democratic administration. Some of it comes from decades of demonizing immigrants who have come into the country through illegal border crossings (which is a civil not criminal charge) or those who have overstayed visas. It has been far too easy to chastise those “others” as undeserving at best and a drain on our economy and political system at worst.

Chris Hayes today shared a TicToc (while on a walk) reviewing the history that the United States had open borders from the founding until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In listening to Timothy Egan’s “A Fever in the Heartland” about the Ku Klux Klan in the midwest in the 1920’s, I learned of the Klan’s crucial role in lobbying for the Immigration Act of 1924.

The challenge today is how to process the thousands coming to the border seeking asylum. Asylum isn’t something we should turn off and on as it suits us. It’s a matter of humanitarian concern and international law.

This weekend, the Senate negotiators reached an agreement on a bill that will provide funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, provide humanitarian support to Gaza, and make major changes to our border processes.

Critics — of which there are many — argue that the bill isn’t necessary and that the president could simply take charge. I cited Catherine Rampell’s column outlining why that isn’t the case. Or they will say, as Senator Graham has, that they must have time to read a 307-page bill.

The link I provided above is the top-line summary of what the bill does. It’s 19 pages and can be read in a matter of minutes. The big bill (as all big bills do) includes all the tweaks that will be necessary to merge the principles of the 19 pages into existing law.

What the bill does is to make major improvements in the asylum process. Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles, included today a video clip from Senator Chris Murphy. I couldn’t figure out how to link to Senator Murphy’s clip, so I transcribed it (with minor eliding). It’s very clear in terms of the positive changes that are in the bill.

The problem is that the process of approving an asylum claim takes upward of ten years. That’s not fair to anybody. But there’s also a problem because a lot of the folks who are coming here to apply for asylum are economic migrants, they’re actually coming here to work. So our bill does two things. One, it dramatically reforms the asylum process to shrink the amount of time that it takes to process a claim from ten years down to about six months, but we’re also going to do a better job of screening migrants at the border so that we make sure that the people who do come into the country are the ones that are most likely to get their asylum claim approved. The second thing we do here is to give the president the power to better manage the border because, as you know, there have been days when we’ve had nine, ten, thousand people showing up at the border and we don’t have the resources that number of people entering the country every day. So what we did is give the president a limited authority to shut down asylum claims in between the land ports of entry, a land port of entry is a place like El Paso, so that when the numbers of crossings are really high, we funnel people who want to apply for asylum to those land ports of entry, where we can do it in a more manageable, more humane way. Now, there’s also in this bill some really important reforms that help migrants. One of them is quicker work permits. A lot of the reason you see immigrants who have come here to apply for asylum, living on the street of packed into homeless shelters is because they can’t work immediately when they get to the United States…. This bill includes 250,000 new visas – work visas, and family reunification visas for folks that come to the country through the visa program. And lastly, this bill really focuses in on the most vulnerable people who are crossing the border, and that’s kids.. For the first time under this bill, we’re going to require that the government appoint and pay for a lawyer for every single one of those little kids…. So I want to give you a little bit of a snapshot of what’s in this bill that’s going to help us better manage the border, that’s going to help us fix a broken asylum system and is going to act more compassionately to the people we really do want to wrap our arms around who are legitimately coming to this country to flee terrible circumstances back home.

I know that’s long for a block quote but I thought it was important. Asylum will be processed much faster by increasing the personnel who can review those claims. Separating out those he calls “economic migrants” from the process will reduce the population needing processing. Children will be provided with legal counsel as their claims are evaluated. The changes to work visas provide a potential solution to the unemployed migrant populations who cannot work and yet are awaiting processing.

I had a hard time finding a news story that linked to the bill’s particulars. Most stories had a paragraph about changes to asylum or closing the border (Murray points out that the closing happens between legitimate ports of entry). Then most of the stories involve process discussions about what various factions have said about the bill. As Jay Rosen has regularly observed, we don’t get stories about what the legislation might accomplish because the mainstream media would rather focus on the sausage-making.

The right-wind media, of course, will make claims of convoys and invasions. It is remarkable how they refuse to recognize the legitimacy of asylum as an international process. It’s far easier for the former president to claim — without evidence — that the asylum seekers are coming from prisons, mental institutions, and terrorist organizations.

The bill will require courage from Senators. To get 10-15 Republicans to support the legislation (as Senator Lankford wants) will take some grass roots lobbying. That is also necessary for Democratic Senators who may not like any changes to immigration policy (although that’s a much smaller number given the importance of the Ukraine and Israel funding).

The House is a bigger problem. Speaker Johnson has already made clear that he considers the bill DOA and is not willing to bring it for a vote (joining his predecessors). Besides, the Freedom Caucus will move to vacate his speakership if he did. Perhaps the only path forward is for those few moderate Republican House members to join with Democrats on a discharge petition. It would be tough but it’s doable.

We are at an important crossroads on a significant issue. On one side we have a bipartisan group of Senators has brokered a deal that can address long-standing problems at the Southern border. On the other, we have a group of politicians who want to protect their ability to use immigration as a campaign and fundraising cudgel.

It’s time for Congress to govern.