President Biden reportedly hopes to work out a compromise on his "Build Back Better" (BBB) bill with Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who has basically deep-sixed the $2 trillion socialist push from his own party. But Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), says any new spending bill brought forth next year is unlikely to include amnesty provisions that were approved in the House version but removed in the Senate budget reconciliation process.
"As far as FAIR is concerned, the immigration provisions were ruled to be out of order by the Senate parliamentarian last week," Mehlman says. "She deserves a lot of credit for not yielding to pressure. She looked at these provisions and properly ruled that they did not belong in a budget reconciliation bill, that it was just a naked attempt to make an end run around the rules of the Senate."
One objective of the Democrats' BBB border legislation was to grant amnesty to about seven million illegals by expanding the president's power of parole.
"Parole in the immigration context was supposed to be used in a very, very limited case-by-case basis, where it can be determined that the admission of somebody who otherwise was not admissible to the United States serve some national or exigent interest," Mehlman explains. "It was never intended to be for an entire class of people. That is what they tried to expand it to be in this bill."
With that in mind, he says, "We can all thank Elizabeth MacDonough, who may be the important person in the country nobody's ever heard of."
Regarding immigration, Mehlman says the recent apprehension of a potential terrorist illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illustrates the folly of the Biden administration's open border policy.
The U.S. Border Patrol says the 21-year old Saudi national with links to a number of "Yemeni subjects of interest" was captured while entering the U.S. from Mexico through Yuma, Arizona.
While the FAIR spokesman deems it fortunate that the Border Patrol apprehended the suspected terrorist, he points out that "it also raises the question of who else has been coming across that border that we don't know about."
"It is wonderful that they caught this guy before he had a chance to do anything, but we don't know who else has come across over the past year that might pose a threat to the country," Mehlman reiterates. "That's the really scary thing, because what we don't know can hurt us very, very severely."
That threat, he says, can be pinned squarely on the Biden administration's open border policy.
"They are the ones who opened the borders; they have created the chaos, and the chaos allows for people who have malintent to get across that border," Mehlman asserts. "When you have the kind of chaos that has been created down there, you get criminals. You get terrorists. You get all sorts of people who really do pose a much more serious threat."
While that does not mean the borders should be closed to everyone who wants a better life, he says ignoring the proper protocols for immigration does open the border to people who really do pose serious and immediate dangers.
