Sunday night the Senate released its long-awaited bill on Ukraine and Israeli war funding along with the so-called border security provisions. This bill is 370 pages long and is largely incomprehensible to the average reader due to the legalese way such bills are written which reference changes to previous bills which the average reader would not be familiar with in the first place.
Obviously, this bill will spend a lot of money although the total amount is not to be found in the bill’s language as it is parsed out on the various amounts to be spent in Ukraine and Israel’s defense and the border expense. Call me cynical but I suspect a lot of this money will be wasted. For example, the bill includes $390 million for non-profits to protect against and respond to acts of terrorism or other threats. I wasn’t aware that non-profits were in a position to help protect us against acts of terrorism. There are other proposed expenditures that looked suspect that were not directly related to defending Ukraine and Israel.
As for the border security part of the bill, there has been a lot of talk about the bill tightening up on asylum claims and, to be fair, there is a lot of language included in regard to asylum claims. However, it also appears to leave a lot of leeway to the asylum officers to determine whether or not an alien (that is the term used in the bill) has a legitimate case or not. Plus, there is a lot of language that appears to provide a drawn-out appeals process for those seeking asylum.
On page 211 of the bill, you get to the part that has been widely reported on that would cause the southern border to be shut down in a so-called emergency. A mandatory emergency would be activated whenever an average of 5,000 or more people have crossed over in a seven-day period. Interestingly, the 5,000 number does not include people coming in from non-contiguous countries. There are also limitations on the number of days in the year in which such an emergency can be activated, starting with 275 days in the first year and going down after that. Also, there is language in the bill that allows the President to suspend the emergency border shutdown provision. Hmm?
My initial take is this bill would likely do little to stem the flow of immigration across the Southern border if a Presidential Administration did not desire to stem the flow.
I invite others to read the bill and to offer their comments. I don’t believe we can leave it up to the politicians and pundits to tell us what this bill would do.
Ron Owens
Signal Mountain