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If the goal was to entice undeserving applicants, you couldn’t design a worse combination of policy and resources. In comparison, the bipartisan proposal is designed to deny more cases at the initial stage and get final decisions on all cases in a matter of months.
For immigration hardliners, the moment of leverage had finally arrived: More enforcement without amnesty. However, instead of seizing this likely once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, House Republicans and former President Trump argued that the bill was not the hardliner wish list they preferred and successfully convinced most Senate Republicans to block the bill.
This one-sided deal that favors Republican enforcement policy is unlikely to ever reappear. There has never been another moment this century when Democrats agreed to enforcement legislation without meaningful legalization provisions. Nor have they ever agreed to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to anywhere near the level needed to locate and deport millions of individuals already in the country illegally.
To be fair, the Dems in Congress and at the state level really wanted a border bill too. Border encounters are 50% higher than the previous all time highs in 80’s and early 00’s. Cities and states just can’t handle 2.4 million folks at that border.
Problem is, the GOP believed their own disinformation and didn’t realize that the Dems actually wanted this too. When the bill looked like it would easily pass, and make democrats happy, they freaked out.