No. of Recommendations: 8
Hopefully more democrats will join up with Adams and republicans to find solutions to control, to protect and close our open border.
It might be more helpful to lobby Republicans.
Last week, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators did a fact-finding tour of border towns in Texas and Arizona. It included John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Jerry Moran of Kansas on the Republican side. Democrats included Mark Kelly and (newly independent) Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Chris Coons of Delaware.
The idea, as it was for a similar group a decade ago, is to assemble a package that features a lot more money for border security along with fixes for broken parts of the U.S. immigration system, including new resources for immigration courts, processing asylum claims, and a path to citizenship for those born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants.
A decade ago, Republicans cried "Amnesty!" over the path to citizenship for Dreamers and never gave the bill a hearing in the House. It's not clear the latest effort can get nine Republican votes in the Senate to move it along, but even if it does, the dynamic in the House looks very similar to 2013.
One possible incentive for Republican support of a functional asylum system: Refugees from countries run by left-wing authoritarians -- including Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua -- tend to become Republican voters, as the reddening of Florida indicates.
Republicans again control the House. Again the Speaker faces revolt from the more extreme members of his conference for any cooperation with Democrats. The question remains whether they will be willing to engage in the ancient political art of compromise to get the robust border security provisions they say they want.
