Democrats Prod Parliamentarian to OK Amnesty in Budget Bill

Neil MunroDecember 1, 2021

Top Democratic staffers met Wednesday with the Senate’s debate referee to demand that she include their parole amnesty for illegal migrants in President Joe Biden’s spending bill.

Bloomberg reported that the parliamentarian did not reveal her views:

House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who helped craft the immigration language in the House, said he’s optimistic.

“This is the third try,” he said earlier Wednesday. “There is no reason that they shouldn’t just accept it.”

In a prior meeting, the parliamentarian “kept it very close to the vest and didn’t react when we made our initial presentation,” Sen. Dick Durbin told reporters on November 30.

The parliamentarian is Elizabeth MacDonough. She has a lot of clout in the legislative process because Senate rules require the exclusion of policy disputes from the fast-track reconciliation bill process. Democrats are using that process because it allows them to push their government-expanding $1.7 trillion bill through the Senate with just 51 votes.

Democrats are also not trying to bypass the parliamentarian because she is backed by several Democrats who represent small states. The Senate’s current debating rules boost the clout of small-state Senators.

Few Republicans are denouncing the Democrats’ donor-backed, wealth-shifting immigration measures, Instead, most are hoping the parliamentarian will exclude the migration measures from the spending bill, so saving them from the pain of arguing against their donors or of ignoring the pro-American demands of their voters.

Still, GOP leaders have appointed an immigration expert to help persuade the parliamentarian to exclude at least some of the migration measures from the bill.

The parole amnesty would provide work permits to 6.5 million illegals for at least 10 years. It is the attention-hogging showpiece immigration measure in the reconciliation bill.

But the bill would also dramatically accelerate chain migration — so spiking housing costs and diverting Americans’ K-12 schools from the basic task of educating Americans’ children.

The legislation would also give Fortune 500 companies a massive new inflow of cheap visa workers to help them exclude U.S. college graduates from rising careers. The green-card giveaway is being criticized this way by some GOP Senators, including Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN).

Bloomberg reported:

Separate immigration provisions that aim to speed up the legal immigration process and address backlogs haven’t yet been presented to the parliamentarian. [Migration advocate Kerri] Talbot said she expects that to happen soon.

Talbot is the deputy director of Immigration Hub, a group created by billionaire widow Laurene Powell Jobs to promote amnesty and migration.

Meanwhile, swing-vote Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is still playing hard to get.

On November 29, for example, he told reporters that he had not studied the House bill’s language on immigration, such as the parole amnesty, the chain-migration acceleration, and the green-card giveaways. Bloomberg.com reported November 29:

Manchin again raised concerns about the impact of more federal spending on inflation, telling reporters that he heard deep concerns about rising prices from his constituents during a week-long Thanksgiving break. The discovery of a new variant of the Covid-19 virus adds to economic uncertainty, he said.

“The unknown is great right now and it gets greater,” Manchin said. “Inflation is now more than transitory. We found out it’s not transitory. And on top of that, you have this new strain of Covid they’re very much concerned about. No one knows what effect it’s going to have. And you have inflation on top. So all these things give you cause to pause.”

In the United States, migration curbs Americans’ productivity, shrinks their political clout, and widens regional wealth gaps. It radicalizes their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture, and allows elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society.