Pro-Amnesty Democrats Threaten Senate Referee's Authority

Some Democratic Senators are threatening to override the Senate’s debate referee, amid signals that the referee has decided to exclude the Democrats’ parole amnesty from the $1.7 trillion Build Back Better spending plan.

The Los Angeles Times reported December 8:

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a longtime proponent of immigration reform, said he would support overruling the parliamentarian if she rules against their latest proposal.

“I’d vote for that,” Durbin said in a brief interview. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), the successful son of illegal migrants, also suggested he would try to overrule the Senate’s parliamentarian:

“Whatever it takes to get this done,” he said. “For Democrats as a whole, I think as time goes on, as negotiations continue, it’s increasingly clear how important and urgent this is.”

The parliamentarian is expected to decide this week if the Democrats’ amnesty plan is too much of a policy change to be included in a bill that is being processed via the fast-track, no-filibuster “reconciliation” process.

The Democrats are using the reconciliation bill to push their migration expansion plans because they do not have the needed 60 votes needed to overcome the Senate’s minority-protection filibuster rules.

The amnesty proposal would provide at least 6.5 million illegals with a 10-year parole status, including work permits.

But it is not clear if the Democrats can override the parliamentarian.

The Senate’s filibuster rules protect the clout of Senators from small states, and so several Democratic Senators are quietly defending the authority of the parliamentarian to enforce those rules, a Senate source told Breitbart News.

The most prominent supporter of the parliamentarian is likely Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has repeatedly said he would not support an override of the parliamentarian.

“It gets complicated,” Durbin told the Los Angeles Times. “There are a lot of different vectors that you can use in this debate, and I expect to see them all.”

The parole amnesty is being packaged with three other changes that would accelerate the inflow of chain migration, distribute a few hundred thousand extra green cards to migrants imported by U.S. companies, and widen the already-huge pipeline of foreign graduates into the careers needed by U.S. graduates.

“If they lose the parole piece [because of the parliamentarian’s decision], do they keep the green card giveaway in there?” a Hill staffer told Breitbart News. “It would be really bad politics for them to not get their amnesty but be giving this big green card giveaway to businesses.”

“It would be the height of irony that all of our efforts on immigration would be to help business and not help people who are undocumented,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), told Bloomberg News.

But the Democrats’ real intentions are difficult to gauge. For example, even if they quietly decide to accept the parliamentarian’s decision, they likely would also stage an insincere P.R. campaign against the parliamentarian to help soften the blow to their supporters and donors.

The Fortune 500’s lobbyists say they will keep going back to the parliamentarian until she says yes to one of their cheap-labor proposals. “Just remember this process is iterative,” said a December 1 tweet from Alida Garcia, a top lobbyist at Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg’s pro-migration group, FWD.us. “What comes back is refined clarity on what next step is – not the beginning or end.”

The parliamentarian has already shot down two Democratic amnesty plans inserted into the reconciliation bill.

Many polls show that labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents.

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

For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.

This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases