I’m not worried about this.
It has zero chance of passing a 50/50 Senate. These people have been trying to pass comprehensive immigration reform for 15 years and couldn’t get it done in a much more favorable political environment. The resorting of the electorate and polarization has made this a non-starter.
The Trump base is also on fire right now: 65% want to reduce immigration, 62% want to deport illegal aliens, 89% want a federal E-Verify system and 86% want to build a wall. The suburbanites who would have supported this shit in the past are Democrats now. Anyone who votes for this in the House or Senate given the political temperature of the GOP base is asking to have their political head on a pike.
“Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) will introduce Biden’s immigration bill Thursday, which includes an eight-year pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) will introduce the bill in the Senate next week.
Why it matters: The bill is unlikely to win needed Republican support, but represents the aggressive immigration priorities of President Biden. It will also kick off the immigration debate on Capitol Hill, which could lead to less sweeping immigration reforms.
What to watch: The bill introduction is likely to spark debate over other immigration bills that touch on parts of Biden’s plan, but are more palatable with a 50-50 split Senate. …”
There are other solid reasons to doubt the wisdom of Joe’s agenda.
Immigration isn’t even a top ten issue for “Latinx” voters and the people who are most affected by Joe’s open border policies are pushing back against it. Among Hispanic voters, strengthening the economy (83%), dealing with COVID (82%), improving the job situation (69%), addressing issues around race in this country (68%), improving education (66%), improving the political system (64%), dealing with the problems of poor people (64%), terrorism (63%), reducing health care costs (63%), reforming Social Security (59%), reducing crime (55%), addressing issues within the criminal justice system (52%) all rank higher than immigration (47%). There isn’t any demand for comprehensive amnesty given the state of the economy. Why on earth would unemployed Hispanic workers want more illegal immigration right now? Until COVID hit in 2020, the tighter labor market was benefiting people like them.
“Democrats in Texas and other states where immigration has been a lightning rod issue are growing increasingly uneasy that the White House is walking into a political buzz saw in its zeal to unwind hard-line Trump administration policies.
Biden has not yet implemented expansive policy changes. The vast majority of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border are still being turned away. Deportations are still taking place and there’s still no pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
But the softer rhetoric and modest changes announced so far by the Biden administration — such as admitting some migrants who have waited in Mexico for months and announcing he would halt deportations — raise the prospects of a new influx of migrants entering the country. There’s already an uptick in migrants heading to the border and some have crossed and been released in some communities already grappling with the pandemic, a strained health care system and high unemployment. …
With the White House and Congress set to release a broad immigration reform bill Thursday, some lawmakers fear the party’s messaging and policy proposals are too much, too soon.
“The way we’re doing it right now is catastrophic and is a recipe for disaster in the middle of a pandemic,” said Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, one of the three Texas Democrats who represents part of the border most affected by spikes in migrant arrests and arrivals. …
“Our party should be concerned. If we go off the rails, it’s going to be bad for us,” Gonzalez said. “Biden is going to be dealing with a minority in Congress if he continues down some of these paths.”
The worries are most acute along the Texas-Mexico border, which is ground zero for the decades long immigration debate. It’s also an increasingly contested battleground where Republicans are targeting three Democratic House incumbents who represent border districts. …”
“Congressional Democrats unveiled President Joe Biden’s expansive immigration reform bill Thursday, which would provide an eight-year pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, but already faces dim prospects for becoming law with such narrow Democratic majorities in both chambers. …
In drafting a sweeping immigration bill early in his presidency, Biden is seeking to avoid what many Democrats viewed as a missed opportunity by former President Barack Obama to address the issue. As designed the bill has been praised widely by progressives and immigrant rights groups. But it’s unlikely to gain any Republican support. …
“This bill was not designed to get to 60,” said a person close to the White House who was briefed on the bill. “There’s no pathway to 60.” …”
Who wants comprehensive immigration reform? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has recently joined the Democratic Party, and liberal activist groups which have always supported them on the issue. Immigration isn’t anywhere close to being a priority for the public.
The least popular thing that Joe has done is raising the refugee cap.
The health and economy executive orders are popular because the public sees these two things as real crises. The woke, trans, climate and open borders stuff is much less popular.
Don’t forget why Democrats lost the 2016 election.
“In 2016, we didn’t lose because our get-out-the-vote lists were not sorted well enough. And it wasn’t that we had the wrong kind of digital targeting. We lost because, big picture, we ran a campaign that increased the salience of immigration at a time when marginal voters in swing states in the Midwest disagreed with us on immigration. That’s why we lost. Obviously, it was a close election, and maybe you could have done something different and gotten 0.4 points more in Wisconsin. But big picture, that is what happened. And I think it’s important to not miss the forest for the trees. There are reasonable debates people have about the cost-effectiveness of canvassing or how much we should be spending on digital ads, but ultimately, that’s not what determines elections.”
As David Shor has pointed out (he was cancelled), it is because they raised the salience of immigration in Obama’s second term, so much so that disaffected voters and a big chunk of the Democratic Leaning Working Class (DLWC) base broke off from the Democratic Party and became MAGA.