Washington, DC – Reports this morning indicate that negotiations to include permanent and damaging asylum and immigration policy changes in the Senate supplemental funding package have broken down.
The following is a statement from Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“Once again, Republicans are demonstrating they would rather threaten aid to our allies in Ukraine than miss the opportunity to inject ugly MAGA politics and push cruel and permanent immigration policy changes in the supplemental.
Whether it’s the Republican Senate negotiators’ efforts to gut asylum and end successful legal parole efforts or the House GOP’s cruel, unworkable and extreme HR2 legislation that Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing, Republicans are demanding that in exchange for supporting Ukraine, our country must enact a host of permanent and cruel policy changes to overturn immigration law put in place to respond to refugees fleeing war-torn Europe seven decades ago. These legal avenues for immigration – asylum and parole – are part of what’s needed to reduce pressures from the unprecedented forced migration we are seeing currently in our hemisphere and across the globe.
Remember, there are important border and asylum issues Congress can and should address in the supplemental funding package that would not permanently gut asylum access or add to border chaos by ending parole programs. But Republicans are acting in bad faith, moving the goalposts to the MAGA extremes. Democrats can’t allow the GOP to define what a larger immigration reform debate needs to be. ‘HR2 or bust’ is not a serious border security strategy. It is a partisan election-year political strategy.
We need a wholesale modernization of our immigration system to address 21st century migration and that process needs to take place via regular order and involve a full-scale set of policy reforms that Republicans don’t solely define.”
Resources and Background
Congress should advance bipartisan solutions to provide smart resources at the border that make the existing process work better while keeping communities safe, including: asylum processing, reducing backlogs and work permit waiting times, resourcing states, localities and community shelter and support services, and bolstering access to legal counsel.
A smart funding package would better fund the existing system and ensure humane treatment for asylum applicants and would not permanently block access to safety. See more policy details in the following memo from immigration experts and advocates on what border and asylum policy provisions Congress should prioritize and deliver in the supplemental package HERE.
