Daily Archives: 6 February 2024

Bipartisan Border Failure

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The Progressive-Democrats running the Senate offered, in return for funding for Ukraine, Israel, and the Republic of China, money for border “security.” Disappointingly, too many Republican Senators agreed to this sucker deal, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has committed to a cloture vote on the thing this week. Hopefully (forlornly), the bill will fail the cloture vote.

Senator James Lankford (R, OK), the lead Republican negotiator for this bill, is especially disappointing in his failure to negotiate effectively and his subsequent meek acquiescence to it.

This is part of what’s in the bill:

(B) MANDATORY ACTIVATION.—The Secretary shall activate the border emergency authority if
(i) during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day; or
(ii) on any 1 calendar day, a combined total of 8,500 or more aliens are encountered.

Seems OK, so far. However.

(A) DISCRETIONARY ACTIVATION.—The Secretary may activate the border emergency authority if, during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 4,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day.

And

(4) LIMITATIONS.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—For purposes of paragraph (3), the Secretary shall not activate the border emergency authority—
(i) during the first calendar year after the effective date, for more than 270 calendar days;
(ii) during the second calendar year after the effective date, for more than 225 days; and
(iii) during the third calendar year, for more than 180 calendar days.

And these provisions are only a three year “requirement.” For significant fractions of each of those years, the border is explicitly wide open—just as it is now.

And

(5) SUSPENSIONS OF AUTHORITY.—The Secretary shall suspend activation of the border emergency authority, and the procedures under subsections (a), (b), (c), and (d), not later than 14 calendar days after the date on which the following occurs, as applicable:

“As applicable” consists of those criteria under the MANDATORY and DISCRETIONARY paragraphs cited above. Whenever the illegal alien influx falls to a merely large number (4,000 per day works out to 120,000 per 30-day month or 1.46 million per year as being an acceptable flood). This is the case, even without that SUSPENSION, for those significant fractions of each year when the Secretary shall not activate the border emergency authority.

And this phrasing, which is repeated throughout (6) WAIVERS OF ACTIVATION OF AUTHORITY:

…the Secretary may, in the sole, unreviewable, and exclusive discretion of the Secretary, determine whether to activate the requirements of the border emergency authority….

This is an attempt to prevent Congressional and Judicial constitutionally mandated oversight, here of the Executive Branch, and worse, it seeks to subordinate those to branches’ authorities to the sole discretion of an unelected bureaucrat subordinate to the President. This is Lankford’s abject surrender to the administrative state.

Any one of these provisions, with the possible exception of the MANDATORY ACTIVATION section cited above (though its context deprecates even this much), should be a deal breaker. Overarching that, though is this. Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have, from the beginning, determinedly refused to enforce our existing immigration and border control laws. On what planet can anyone (Lankford? Anyone?) believe that either of these would exercise the expulsion authority that is merely authorized in this latest bill, much less exercise the authority this bill mandates under higher illegal alien influx?

Better to require Biden to enforce those existing laws and close the border first. Only subsequently could the sort of border control tenets in this bill be discussed. But, if Biden actually did that, these tenets would be unnecessary.

The Senate’s proposed bill can be read here.

Ukraine, Israel, and the RoC absolutely need funding and arms, but that should be brought up as three separate, stand-alone bills, just as any legitimate legislative proposal should be. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) has come close with his proposal for funding Israel in a stand-alone bill, but his proposal is a supplemental bill with no means of paying for the funding—just more deficit and associated debt. That bill should be a failure in committee.

Update: Corrected an originally bad number for the number of illegal aliens crossing our border per month before there’s any sort of trigger to start closing our border. My third-grade arithmetic notes need reviewing.

Eric Adams’ Duplicity

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Or it’s the incompetence of New York City’s Progressive-Democratic mayor, Eric Adams.

After warning that a surge in illegal arrivals to the Big Apple would “destroy New York City” and blaming the influx for prompting budget cuts, New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams reportedly plans to provide illegal alien families with pre-paid credit cards.

A key aspect of Adams’ scheme:

The plan will begin with a $53 million pilot program targeting the migrant residents of the Roosevelt Hotel. Run through Mobility Capital Finance, the pilot plan will provide 500 families with an Immediate Response Card for use on food and infant care supplies.

That works out to $106,000 per illegal alien family. How does that compare with the amounts Adams’ budget commits to the city’s resident—and American citizen—homeless families? How does that compare with the amounts Adams’ budget commits to “ordinary” welfare payments to the city’s resident—and American citizen—families who are at the bottom of the city’s economy?

And this:

The city estimates that roughly 15,000 migrant families currently reside in NYC hotels and the administration plans to expand the program to all of them should the pilot program prove fruitful.

At $106k per each, that accumulates, according to my third grade arithmetic, to $1.59 billion. Beyond that, what logic supports the blatantly unequal treatment that favors those 15,000 families while leaving all those remaining illegal alien families literally out in the cold? Of course, that would run the bill up another billion-and-a-third….

From where does Adams expect to draw those $106k per family in his self-proclaimed environment of City destruction and attendant budget cuts? It’s more of his magical thinking.