Washington, DC – Yesterday, Senate Republicans, led by Senators James Lankford (R-OK), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), released a deeply unserious immigration proposal that re-ups many of the worst elements of House Republicans’ extreme and unworkable HR2 legislation.
The following is a statement from Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“In exchange for funding the government, avoiding a shutdown and supporting our allies in Ukraine, Republicans are demanding that our country enact a host of permanent policy changes that would compound chaos and cruelty at the border and move us farther from real solutions to 21st century migration.
Yesterday’s one-page ‘proposal’ from Senate Republicans isn’t a real attempt at negotiating a breakthrough. Instead, it’s a warmed-over version of House Republicans’ extreme, cruel, and unworkable HR2 legislation, filled with provisions to gut asylum access and re-up Trump’s failed policies. It also seeks to eviscerate legal pathways that are working to alleviate border pressures, which is bound to add more chaos and cruelty at the border. It’s good to see the White House and many Democrats rejecting Republicans’ deeply unserious offer as a non-starter.
We need a wholesale modernization of our immigration system. That process needs to take place via regular order and involve a full-scale set of policy reforms, not just deterrence-only efforts being shoehorned into a short-term funding debate by a Republican Party that keeps proving itself unwilling or incapable partners in the basic functioning of government and our democracy.”
