The only federal legislative body that has actually voted on immigration reform is the United States House of Representatives. When they took over the majority in January 2023, they put much of what was in the 94 Executive Orders that President Biden reversed from the Trump Administration and codified them into a reform package and passed H. R. 2 and sent it to the United States Senate where it sits now and for the last 14 months. Georgia has two Democrat Senators and I’ve asked both of them what their opinion is of this bill. The both say you must have a secure border to have a sovereign nation, but they won’t take a position on H. R. 2.
So here’s the history of the recent past in immigration. The true and unvarnished problems on both sides and they are not what you think.First, let’s establish that President Obama and President Trump had basically the same laws on the books as President Biden and Biden’s predecessors did an infinitely better job enforcing immigration policy than he has. Heck, President Obama didn’t talk about it much but it’s widely known that if the illegal crossings at the border exceeded 1000 on any given day there were crisis talks in the West Wing. Joe Biden was part of that administration. President Obama was called the “Deporter in Chief” for his hard line approach on enforcing the laws on the books at that time. President Trump did an even better job. The problem was that they were doing additional things by Executive Order and the ping pong of one side putting things in and the other side taking them away that goes on between administrations had to stop. H. R. 2 was an attempt to do that.
President Biden says repeatedly and as recently as his border visit last week that he introduced immigration reform on “Day 1” of his administration and Republicans didn’t act. The problem with this statement is Democrats controlled the House and the Senate and the Presidency for the first two years of his term. President Biden spent decades in the Senate, he should know this. If anyone held it up, or if there was even a bill, it was Democrats that stalled it, not Republicans. They had the control and they wanted to be able to send out emails with “donate” buttons on this issue. They didn’t care.
Then the U. S. House of Representatives passed H. R. 2 and sent it to the Senate. Again, Democrats had control of the Senate and they didn’t bring it up. More recently, a bipartisan group of Senators put together a compromise on immigration reform. I like Sen. Lankford, the Republican in the group. He’s a strong conservative and a faithful Christian. But this bill was not much better than what we have right now. Speaker Mike Johnson said it was “DOA” in the House. But the fact remains that Senator Schumer controls the voting in the Senate and they didn’t bring it up for a vote.
You don’t know if something fails until you vote on it. The first mistake was the secret negotiations skirting the committee process. The second mistake was holding it for view for as long as they could seemingly in hopes that it would fail. Then former President Trump made a comment about it and now Democrats blame him when the truth of the matter is when they’ve had majorities they have refused to actually take a vote on these issues. If they won’t vote, what kind of record do they have?
I’m all about solutions so here’s what they should do if we were living in a sane world where both sides weren’t just looking for issues to fundraise on rather than solve. Senators, look in the mirror and you’ll see the problem. You had the opportunity and the majority to vote on or improve the President’s so-called “Day 1” proposal and you did nothing. You had the opportunity and the majority to work this bipartisan compromise through the process and you pontificated to no avail.
So what should you do? Notice this is in present tense. Take up H. R. 2. If you believe so much in your bipartisan bill, add it as an amendment to H. R. 2 and then pass it—if you dare. Since the bills won’t match up, you do the work and appoint a conference committee and you work it out with both the House and the Senate. That’s the way it’s supposed to be done but you are so far away from doing what’s best for the American people that you don’t even know what the right thing looks like.
Hey, you can adopt this path on many other issues also—like passing a budget on time. The committee process is there for a reason. Negotiating in secret is just a recipe for distrust.
The former President shouldn’t have gotten involved either. His position shouldn’t be on anything to do nothing until November. No one knows what will happen between now and November and if someone says they do, they are misleading you.
We can fix this and the Senate needs to really come to the table. The House has voted and put forth a plan. You may not like it but if you are in the Senate and you are saying we just won’t vote and think that is a strategy, then you are on the “let’s raise money on this instead of solving it” team.
I’m especially calling on my senators, Sen. Ossoff and Sen. Warnock, to demand that the laws that are currently on the books be enforced while we work all this out. As negative as I may sound in this piece, I am a believer in this process and what we can do together. We are a nation of laws and we can’t pick and choose which ones to enforce. Twenty years ago, then Congressman Nathan Deal said on this subject, “Enforce the laws or change them.” He was right then and sadly, he’s right now
