The Democrat-led group in the Senate now pushing the draft immigration bill defeated numerous GOP amendments on May 20 that would have improved current enforcement measures, curbed financial aid to illegal immigrants and excluded many criminals from the proposed amnesty.
The Democratic-led group also rolled back a 1986 law that requires border agents to track the arrival and departure of all visitors at international airports, seaports and land borders. The law was included in the broader 1986 amnesty, but was never implemented.
The rollback was set in an amendment offered by Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch. His amendment mandated fingerprint-checks only at the nation’s 30 busiest airports by 2019.
Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions decried the rollback, saying, “It’s a retreat from current law, a weakening of current law.”
The various amendments were voted up or down by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is preparing to send the bill to the Senate for a floor vote in June.
The bill is backed by President Barack Obama, who recently predicted that its passage would be a “historic achievement.”
To make his case against the fingerprint rollback, Sessions showed a report that has been held secret by the Department of Homeland Security. The report detailed a successful test of a fingerprint system in 2009.
The test system detected 300 people who had overstayed their visas or were on threat lists, Sessions said. “How many foreign nationals have we missed in the past four years because DHS failed to implement a 17-year-old congressional mandate?” he said.
The cost-saving and enforcement measures proposed by Sessions and his allies were defeated in party-line votes by 10 Democrats on the committee.
In most votes during the mark-up sessions, the Democratic bloc has been aided by two GOP Senators on the committee, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake.
Both are part of the eight-man group that drafted the bill, which is led by New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer, who also sits on the judiciary committee.
Hatch’s amendment passed 13 to 5 because the Democrats were joined by Hatch, Graham and Flake.
The Democrats also defeated a measure by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley that would have barred members of street gangs from the proposed amnesty.
Additionally, Democrats defeated a Sessions amendment that would have given enforcement agencies some of the federal money given to so-called “sanctuary cities” to try to exclude enforcement agencies.
However, both Flake and Graham have seen their home-state poll numbers drop in recent weeks.
During deliberations May 20, both Senators voted for some popular enforcement measures that were doomed for defeat by the unanimous no votes from the Democratic members of the committee.
They both voted for an amendment proposed by Sen. John Cornyn that would have denied the amnesty to “serious criminals, including domestic abusers, child abusers, and drunk drivers,” according to a statement from Sessions’ office.
They voted for an amendment that would have denied annual Earned Income Tax Credit payments to people who receive the proposed amnesty.
The 867-page bill is expected to provide amnesties to at least 11 million illegal immigrants and bring in another 20 million people — few of whom will have university degrees — over the next decade.
The bill will also boost the annual inflow of blue-collar and professional guest-workers above 1 million.
The total cost to taxpayers is unclear.
The immediate amnesty of roughly 11 million low-skill workers is expected to spur benefit spending by $9.3 trillion over 50 years. Additional inflows of low-skill workers will boost that price tag, but advocates for the bill say its various costs will be offset by economic gains.
The immigration bill is powered by an alliance of pro-immigration Democrats and pro-business GOP senators.
In an April 7 interview on the “Meet The Press” Sunday talk-show. Graham said that “if we’re reasonable with 11 million [illegal immigrants], if we all give them a pathway to citizenship … then the Democratic Party has to give us the guest worker program to help our economy.”