Although the GOP-dominant House of Representatives approved border security legislation with House Resolution 2 last week, a government official believes the Senate is unlikely to follow suit.
Passed on the eve of Title 42’s expiration by a vote of 219-213, the Secure the Border Act increases the number of patrol agents at the U.S.-Mexico border and adds more penalties for migrants who continue to reside in the U.S. after their visas expire, according to media reports.
“We've never seen Congress pass a bill this strong when it comes to enforcing our laws, securing the border, and reducing illegal immigration,” said U.S. House Homeland Security Committee senior adviser John Cooper. “The Senate could take this up but is it going to pass? That certainly doesn't look rosy in terms of outlook, but this is important because it changes the conversation.”
Cooper was among the panelists at the 2023 Republican National Lawyers Association on May 12. The group discussed Title 42 matters on a panel called "Border in Chaos: Enforcement Problems, the End of Title 42, and Other Issues in Immigration Law."
“HR 2 says that the United States is not going to allow any administration to just randomly flout the law and make it up as they go along,” Cooper told the group of GOP attorneys. “We're going to interpret it this way that makes it very clear that this is what we believe, this is what the law says and you have to follow it.”
Other panelists included Lora Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, and America First Legal vice president and general counsel Gene Hamilton.
“What this means is increased crowding in schools,” Hamilton said. “Given the numbers of unaccompanied alien children, your public school district and your state will have to increase funding for English as a second language (ESL). I hope the school district has money for that and I hope they're able to do ESL in a way that doesn't detract from your own children's education.”
In addition to education, the panelists discussed how a mass influx of migrants will affect the labor market, wages, congressional districts and law enforcement.
“What this influx does is depress wages for American citizens who are already here,” Hamilton added. “The people who suffer the most from open borders are people in the inner cities and people in rural America who are competing for the same types of positions, which are low-skill and low-wage positions. It's completely contrary to the national interest to have this number of people flooding into the country unchecked and unmitigated.”
Maintaining an open border is all about power and calculating that migrants will vote Democratic, according to Ries.
“It’s also about apportionment in Congress,” she said. “The Democrats were successful in keeping off of the U.S. census, the U.S. citizenship question. Everybody gets accounted for in the census and that goes to draw congressional districts.
"You have districts in California that should not exist because they include people who aren't citizens and other states should have additional congressional districts because it's kind of a zero-sum game,” Ries added.
