{"id":21481,"date":"2019-05-15T12:36:27","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T16:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=21481"},"modified":"2019-05-15T12:36:29","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T16:36:29","slug":"senate-democrats-ridiculously-unserious-proposal-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/05\/15\/senate-democrats-ridiculously-unserious-proposal-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Democrats\u2019 Ridiculously Unserious Proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Tuesday, Senate Democrats unveiled what they characterized<\/a> as \u201ca set of serious, legitimate solutions\u201d to the growing border crisis, while simultaneously slamming President Trump for \u201cdoubling down on failed immigration policies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The serious solution is, in fact, a rehash of a failed legislative proposal made in the last Congress to increase funding to the failed Central American states from which thousands of migrants are fleeing daily. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed the Central America Reform and Enforcement Act<\/a> is a bill \u201cbased on solutions that have shown success in the past and seeks to stem the flow of asylum claims at our border,\u201d while providing a \u201csafer path to asylum\u201d for Central American families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The purportedly \u201ccommon sense\u201d measure would boost\nfinancial assistance to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as a means of\nmitigating the violence and poverty in the Golden Triangle countries; increase\nopportunities for migrants to apply for asylum before they get to the U.S.\nborder; put more \u201cresources\u201d into immigration judges; and add more protections\nfor children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his column praising the political genius of the proposal, Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent wrote<\/a>, \u201cThe hope is that the plan will give Democrats the basis for a substantive blueprint to respond to the asylum-seeking crisis \u2014 and, more broadly, an answer to Trump\u2019s xenophobic and nativist nationalism, a vision to contrast with his.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plan fits in line with the righteously-i<\/a>n<\/a>dignant criticism<\/a> Democrats have been directing at the Trump Administration for placing conditions on any future aid to Central America. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senate Democrats are offering a vision that provides a\ncontrast to Trump. They also are proposing to give more aid to corrupt Central\nAmerican governments \u2013 a position they\u2019ve questioned in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When there was a similar, but much smaller, surge in migrants to the U.S. border in 2014, the Obama administration pitched a plan to give more aid to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Notably, the $1 billion \u201cfund-your-way-out-of-the-border-crisis\u201d policy was outlined in a New York Times op-ed<\/a> penned by current Democratic presidential candidate and then-Vice President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proposal was based on another aid package designed to improve the situation in Colombia, which was facing similar problems with drug crime, violence and poverty. As even the liberal American Prospect magazine acknowledged<\/a>, it was a failure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Biden was a willing messenger for repeating\nfailed foreign policy initiatives, some of the same senators calling today for\nmore aid to Central America had their own reservations about the Obama plan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe’ve spent billions of dollars there over two decades. And we’ve seen conditions get worse in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador,\u201d Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), informed<\/a> then-Secretary of State John Kerry during a February hearing in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leahy also suggested\nprivate businesses in the region bear a responsibility to improve the situation\nand \u201cshould be doing more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During questioning of Kerry at an appropriations hearing<\/a> later in the month, Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) questioned the secretary about the wisdom of investing another $1 billion of taxpayer dollars into Central America<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can’t just continue\nto layer aid programs,\u201d he told Kerry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have to have\naccountability in these programs. We\u2019ve had many programs in Central America\nand the results have been less than consequential,\u201d added Cardin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those same concerns about pouring good money into bad governments were echoed in an August 19, 2015 letter<\/a> from a group of House Democrats to then-Secretary Kerry. The group said that while they understood the administration\u2019s efforts to \u201caddress the root causes of migration\u201d from Central America, they worried U.S. taxpayer dollars would be \u201cused for military-style policing, activity that could, in fact, be one of the causes of this migration as it exacerbates the violence in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as they are today, Republicans called in 2014 for amending the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008<\/a>, which requires migrant children from Central American countries have their cases heard in immigration courts, unlike those from Mexico or Canada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the Obama administration backed Republicans\u2019<\/a> call for granting the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) more authority to expeditiously deport migrant children from Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July 2014, then-DHS\nSecretary Jeh Johnson told Congress he thought \u201csome type of added discretion\non my part would be helpful to address this particular situation\u201d on the\nborder, specifically, he added, \u201ctreating migrants from the three Central\nAmerican countries\u201d in the same way as migrants from Mexico and Canada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, the Obama\nadministration buckled under pressure from pro-amnesty activists and no change\nwas made. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stating his intent to\nvote against any further aid to Central America without changing the 2008\nanti-trafficking law, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said, \u201cIt would be more\nmoney, same problem, if we don’t change the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

True words then. Even\ntruer words now. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, Senate Democrats unveiled what they characterized as \u201ca set of serious, legitimate solutions\u201d to the growing border crisis, while simultaneously slamming President Trump for \u201cdoubling down on failed immigration policies.\u201d The serious solution is, in fact, a rehash of a failed legislative proposal made in the last Congress to increase funding to the<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":13338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[74],"tags":[5179,1524,5603,141],"yst_prominent_words":[3836,5594,5593,1967,1938,5601,3341,3947,3336,3274,3516,5597,5600,5595,5598,2651,4426,5599,2721,5596],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21482,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21481\/revisions\/21482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21481"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}