kurtster wrote:
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The NYT is a liberal fantasy news outlet that I don't consider worthwhile just like you don't consider FNC to be worthwhile. So there you have that."
You're not fooling anyone when you write crap like that. You're just confessing that you deliberately didn't read the NYT excerpts or can't respond to its recitation of historical facts. As for FNC, I confess I don't know WTF FNC stands for. You apparently think highly of it but strangely don't use any of its reportage or analysis to back up your assertions.
And so we have another reason your arguments don't find much traction here: you can't or won't back them up.
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The dems burned us back when Reagan foolishly took them at their word with the reform package of that time and they have been lying about their intentions ever since. That would be almost 40 years ago."
You don't even bother to explain what you're referring to—nothing about the supposed Democratic broken promise, nothing about how Reagan lost out because of this supposed skullduggery, nada. And what does Reagan-era immigration reform have to do with today? Most of the main politicians from that age are dead or retired.
"We already have a real stand alone comprehensive immigration bill to consider that looks pretty darned good to me. That would be HR 2.
What is wrong with this ? Why is it so bad that Schumer would not even look at it ?"
I didn't know much about HR 2 until I looked at its provisions today. It reads lik an unrealistic anti-immigrant vendetta whose creators pulled together for political show and hardly for passage. The E-Verify system seems pretty poor at catching "undocumented workers"==see below. It's already used by 22 states . Making it drastically more effective at removing undocumented workers from the American workplace could devastate certain industries like constructtion and agriculture. HR2's asylum restrictions seem far less practial than the Senate bill's. HR2 aims to fund a wall even though Trump's administration and the years following showed that such a wall causes conflicts between states, property owners and the federal government—and it the wall doesn't work. The proposed removal of protections for immigrant children is a human rights disaster waiting to explode. HR2 provides no pathway for legalization of undocumented immigrants and no funding for increasing the capability of official ports of entry to handle applicants; both of these failures are insanely stupid.
5 things to know about the border bill at the heart of GOP shutdown threats
Under H.R. 2, employers would be required to verify â under penalty of prison â that all their workers were documented.
The method for doing so would be the E-Verify system, a voluntary program set up under a 1996 immigration bill passed under then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) that cross-references an employeeâs employment paperwork against the social security database.
That program is currently optional under federal law, although 22 states require all employers to use it, and several â including Michigan and Texas â require it for federal contractors.
Data on whether requiring the program successfully forces undocumented immigrants from the labor force is contradictory.
...
U.S. government records found that about 57,000 citizens were erroneously flagged as undocumented by the program â a number that the National Immigration Forum argues is a serious undercount, because recording such an error requires employers to know they can contest a false positive.
And a 2019 report by the libertarian Cato Institute found that E-Verify catches fewer than 1 in 6 undocumented workers.
Even catching that share could impact industries that rely on undocumented labor, however. That includes the agriculture industry, as about 40 percent of all farmworkers in the U.S. are undocumented, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
According to the USDA, that number is highest in California â and a reason Rep. John Duarte (R) was one of just two Republicans to vote against H.R. 2 in May.
The program âwould have been devastating for food producers or would have been devastating for farmworker families,â he said.
Slashes asylum
...
As such, H.R. 2 makes it far harder for migrants to claim asylum and makes the process far more onerous for those able to stay long enough for that claim to be processed.
For example, the bill denies people the ability to claim asylum unless the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer who processes them believes their ultimate case would more likely than not be accepted, adds a $50 fee to make an asylum claim and bars migrants from making an asylum claim anywhere but at an official port of entry.
This last measure represents a paradox, because it is precisely the backups and closures at ports of entry that help push migrants to venture into the desert between official crossings.
The bill also provides for even those who are found to have credible claims to be held in detention for the years while their cases drag on â and requires the Department of Homeland Security to expand detention facilities to hold them.
...
In fact, under the Biden administration, the asylum system has already been significantly restricted. In August, a three-judge panel upheld the administrationâs âasylum ban,â which bars most migrants who have transitioned through a third country from applying for refugee status.
Build a wall while slashing immigrant services
H.R. 2 would require the federal government to wall off at least 900 miles of the U.S.âs roughly 2000-mile border with Mexico, resuming all Trump-era plans that were interrupted by the former presidentâs electoral defeat in 2020.
To do so, the bill would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to waive all legal requirements â such as environmental review or historical site review â to get the wall built as quickly as possible.
It also would offer $110 million per year to the border forces being set up by states including Texas, often in open defiance of the federal government â with money that would in part be balanced out by defunding any nonprofits that provide services to undocumented immigrants.
,,,
And it would revive long-ignored language from a 2006 bill that would allow DHS to close the border entirely if it determines doing so is necessary to block undocumented crossings.
Ends protections for migrant children
H.R. 2 would roll back many protections for minors created under the Flores settlement, which resulted from a 1993 court case and has since guided federal immigration law, aside from a brief hiatus under Trump.
It would require DHS to reestablish family detention, and once again allow families with children to be detained indefinitely.
The bill would also make it far harder for unaccompanied migrant children to claim special immigrant juvenile status â something youth can currently claim if they canât reunite with one or both parents, and which H.R. 2 would restrict to those whose parents have neglected or abandoned them.
It would also fast-track deportations of unaccompanied minors, lengthen the time that children can be held in adult facilities on the border from 3 to 30 days and bar states from creating licensing requirements for those border detention facilities â even in cases where state law should require such oversight.
Doesnât address legal immigration
Perhaps just as notable as what H.R.2 includes, however, is what it doesnât: any path for citizenship, bolstering of pathways to legal immigration or alternative means of supporting a U.S. workforce â and particularly food system â that relies on undocumented labor.
In addition to not offering any expansion to the countryâs sclerotic and backlogged legal immigration pathways, H.R. 2 wouldnât provide funding to expand the capacity of official ports of entry â the only place where it would allow asylum claims to be made.
And GOP lawmakers including Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) have pushed to cut DHSâs funds if the Biden administration and the Senate donât pass H.R. 2.
This lack of action on legal immigration stands out as even key Republican constituencies like the Chamber of Commerce, which is part of a vast array of state and national business groups â from the National Milk Producers Federation and the National Restaurant Association to Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association â call for comprehensive reform of the legal immigration system.
There is some overlap between HR2 and the Senate bill—for instance, they grant the federal government the power to shut down the southern border during emergencies and immigration surges. AFAICT though, the Senate bill provides for far more funding of its proposed agenda than does HR2.
The Senate bill also seems more realistic in terms of handling asylum seekers:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politi...
The bill would also end the practice of âcatch and release.â If passed into law, the bill would allow migrants who come to the border through lawful ports of entry and families to enter the U.S. under federal supervision for 90 days while they complete asylum interviews. Those who pass would receive work permits as they await adjudication of their claims. Those who fail would be removed from the U.S. and repatriated to their home countries or to Mexico.
The bill would mandate detaining migrants who try to enter the U.S. outside of official ports of entry, pending any asylum claims. Those who fail would also be removed.
The bill allocates funding for repatriation flights up to 77 per day.
