Illegal Alien Payouts and Ongoing Amnesty Efforts

FAIR's Spencer Raley and Preston Huennekens discuss the Biden administration's proposal to pay hundreds of millions to illegal alien families, and Democrats' third attempt to pass the largest amnesty in U.S. history via the "Build Back Better" plan.

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The Federation for American Immigration Reform's podcast bringing you the most important updates about U.S. immigration. Featuring special guests including members of Congress, journalists, and experts in the field.

Spencer:
hello everyone welcome back to another episode of fair’s understanding immigration podcasts I’m your host this week spencer rayleigh fair's director of research and I’m accompanied by preston hennekens our government relations manager as has been the case for I guess months now for a year now or however long it seems immigration issues continue to dominate the headlines especially as the biden administration's self-created immigration crisis rages on and a news story came out a couple weeks ago from the wall street journal detailing how the bind administration is considering offering $450,000 each to illegal aliens separated from family members at the border during the trump administration some families could see payouts over a million dollars and the entire program is estimated to cost more than one billion dollars we're also seeing news coming out of congress where democrats are once again trying to use the reconciliation process to pass an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens after already multiple failed attempts that were struck down by the senate parliamentarian so preston let's start with these proposed payouts to illegal aliens how did this scenario unfold what's the background and why are these payouts being proposed

Preston:
right so this will require us to go back to 2018 right during the trump administration and for our listeners uh at home recall that in 2018 president trump faced a border crisis as well we had caravans coming to the border there were really just high numbers of apprehensions not to the extent that we're seeing today under the biden administration but it was a big enough of a problem that the trump administration tried to do something about it and at this time really congress was sitting on its hands uh they were not doing anything to try and alleviate what was going on at the border so the trump administration came up with a pretty novel idea which was to criminally prosecute every illegal alien apprehended at the border uh you know you might be asking yourself oh we don't already do that uh and the answer is no we don't (no we don't) and so that was why this was a novel approach and at the time it no one really knew how it was going to turn out because uh we knew for it fair and we even said this at the time the u.s didn't have enough detention space to hold everyone that was coming in at the border there weren't enough ice beds there weren't enough agreements with local sheriffs and local state and county jails to hold illegal aliens being apprehended so this was no one really knew it was going to happen what caught the most attention were instances where illegal aliens in family units were apprehended the adults were criminally prosecuted and because of that because of american law you cannot hold minors in jail with uh with adults that is something that has never occurred um in modern us history and certainly did not occur in 2018 and (no) that necessitated what became known as family separation where the adults who came in family units were criminally prosecuted and the minors and minor children were separated and in some cases were held in separate facilities or in separate areas of the same facility some of them obviously unaccompanied children were transferred to the custody of health and human services but this became the big issue right and this is what the media what democrats seized on what were images of parents being detained and their children or people who claim they were their children being detained elsewhere and it became such a pr disaster for the trump administration that they subsequently ended it after I think it was like maybe four months

Spencer:
yeah it didn't it didn't last very long and again really I think what you're seeing here is you know it was kind of made a bigger issue in the media than it necessarily needed to be you know simply because obviously you know it's a tragic situation ever when a child has to be separated from their parents but this is a situation of parents violating the law and facing criminal charges because of it uh so I guess my question I guess the question actually comes from that then is for one why is this seen by the biden administration or really even others at the time as such a significant issue to this to the point that now there is this discussion these settlement proposals being made for these families that were separated you know why is that being offered for example to these individuals but never even entertained for american citizens or lawful migrants who might violate the law and be arrested and separated from their children in that respect

Preston:
so and again what's interesting is that the trump administration did not break the law

Spencer:
no they did not no they enforced the law

Preston:
it's not as if they yeah if anything they just enforce the law to the letter of it which hadn't been done and so what happened is that groups of these aliens that were separated ended up suing uh the trump administration with the help of the aclu with the help of some of these other pro-illegal alien groups that were giving them the best lawyers and whatnot and so now what you're seeing is now that president biden is in office and now that it's his political appointees in control of the justice department and the department of homeland security and in hhs what you're seeing is a willingness to entertain these lawsuits and to settle right instead of fighting them in court where I’m not a legal expert but I would assume the government would probably have a good chance of winning these cases and saying look right the former administration aggressively enforced the law but they didn't break the law

Spencer:
typically you don't lose a case if you're not breaking the law

Preston:
right so the willingness is intriguing and the amount of money being doled out in the settlement is staggering

Spencer:
yeah I think that's really what caught the attention of so many you know was these you could literally be turning a lot of these illegal alien families into millionaires because they broke our laws and that's unthinkable even if you look at just $450,000 that's more money than most people ever see in one place in their life

Preston:
right and the idea that it would be going to every individual (yeah) not to not to a family unit or you know a larger settlement to the petitioning group that would then be split amongst the others

Spencer:
there would be multiple payouts per family instances

Preston:
and in this case I mean you're seeing you're talking about a parent and a child receiving $900,000 in an instant and that that's right that's to say just one parent and one child that is

Spencer:
right that doesn't say multiple parents multiple children we don't have all the all the fine print on what how this would play out but just from the reports we're seeing in the wall street journal and from the aclu yeah it would be a massive amount you know I really find it interesting you know the aclu has essentially rebranded itself they should essentially change their name from american civil liberties union to perhaps like the foreign-born civil liberties union or something along those lines because what they're proposing here is taking a billion dollars from law abiding american taxpayers and lawful migrants and giving them to immigration law breakers and what I really found interesting is now they they're they're going after the very administration that is entertaining these settlements because we saw president biden come out and call the reports that you know these payouts are being entertained garbage then the next day when the aclu was like hey by the way it doesn't seem like you know what's going on he turned on oh no I’m perfectly fine with it and now and now a day later every question being asked of the administration is being referred to the doj you know jen psaki president biden they don't even want to talk about anymore so what's going on here because the administration wants does the biden administration not know what's going on in his own administration did he think maybe did he forget something do you think he could lie and get away with it why uh who's calling the shots here and what's going on

Preston:
yes to and to joe biden's credit the federal bureaucracy is enormous uh there are valid cases for reducing it you know across the political spectrum um and so there's really two but you have two options here right is that one is that he truly had no clue what merrick garland was up to at his own doj and he was completely caught unaware by this um again which is entirely plausible the second possibility is that he knew of it or at least was had been briefed on it and then just lied when right when he was asked about it and just said what he thought people wanted to hear because the interesting thing is about the second instance where he was not asked about it the white a white house spokesperson corrected him and said actually no this is a proposal that we're entertaining so the only thing that has come out of joe biden's mouth is that he thinks it's garbage and that it's not going to happen but then you're right two days or a day later a spokesperson for the white house comes out and says no we are entertaining this and then as you said further inquiries have been passed on to the to the justice department

Spencer:
right and it's interesting because you could see examples in the past of either of either possibility playing out we've seen joe biden use his own term utter malarkey you know whenever asked about something just straight up lie about it we've also seen situations really doesn't seem like he knows what's going on and you would think you would think any time payouts in the billions of dollars are being made to illegal aliens something that's obviously going to make massive news when it hits you would think the president would get a brief on that someone would say hey by the way we're going through with this so either way it's either way it's not good either doesn't know what's going on in his own administration uh people are just running it as they see fit not even briefing him on it or he's lying to the american people neither scenario is particularly uh beneficial

Preston:
right I was gonna say I’m not sure what's worse that he didn't know about it at all right or they knew about it and was totally okay with it

Spencer:
um so where does this go from here you know if the bite administration the doj is just determined to make this happen determined to settle is there anyone that can stop it can congress use the power of the purse to say hey we're already seeing some discussion occur about we're just not going to fund certain things if that money is going to go to something like this would a threat like that even work

Preston:
under the current composition of congress I don't think there's a lot of hope for them exercising the power of the person stopping this obviously they the democrats have control of the house of representatives and the senate and the white house that could obviously change after the 22 midterms but that wouldn't go into effect until january 2023 so I am not very bullish on the prospect of the house of representatives particularly stepping in and doing something about this uh and so really um they have the ability to do whatever they want on this front I’m not sure if they're again I’m not a legal expert I’m not sure if there are states that could sue about that I don't know if they were outstanding it's that

Spencer:
there's a lot of different angles that come into play here what about what about over on the senate you know it's a close divide and we're already seeing moderates like manchin and sinema balk a little bit at some of just the utter ridiculousness being proposed by this administration is there any chance that they might break ranks on something like that or is that going too far outside of the norm you know trying to control the power of the purse or

Preston:
I think the senate would be going too far out of the norm and frankly I also don't believe that the senate has the time to do anything there it's a you know for those who know the senate is a slow moving body a lot slower than the house and they are currently wrapped up in what we're going to be talking about next with right the build back better act the uh which has a massive amnesty um and all of their energies focused on that I’m not sure that they would have the time to do anything in a separate a separate vote there there's really nothing I see the senate doing and also I don't I see maybe manchin making a stink about it right I but do I see him going to the level of trying to introduce something and piss off senate democratic leadership more than he already has I’m not sure that you know he's I think he's playing the political game here where he wants certain things in and out of this giant bill that's coming up so I think he's going to be holding his cards pretty close to the chest and you know poking leader schumer over this maybe is not in his best interest as much as we'd like for him to do it

Spencer:
definitely so let's go ahead and change gears to the amnesty we just mentioned uh despite being told twice now that amnesty is not germane to infrastructure and not appropriate for this reconciliation process democrats just don't seem willing to give up seems like they're just going to keep banging their head against the brick wall and then hope that something sticks so what does this latest effort look like now what are they proposing now

Preston:
right so the latest effort is uh is very interesting for um they're what they're essentially proposing is to create a program that looks like daca but for seven million illegal aliens um and so it's novel in their approach because the parliamentarians struck down their first two attempts mainly on the point of legalizing aliens and saying that those effects would not are not germane to the budget or not germane to what needs to go into this plan um whereas this they're saying well now we're not we're not giving them a pathway to citizenship what we're doing is giving them a 10-year work permit and deportation protection that would end in 2031. for those of you out there you already know that there's nothing more permanent in immigration than a temporary solution (oh yeah) there is absolutely no way that these people would get 10 years of work protection 10 years of or excuse me of deportation protection 10 years of work authorization and then face deportation and that would never happen

Spencer:
and then face deportation we see that already with you know the multiple permanent temporary protection status you know where you know even in some instances where it's five or seven years that individuals had tps (as soon as you get it you're here for life) right and as soon as you know in the past when the trump administration tried to end some of these there were you know myriad lawsuits and you know all these arguments about oh these individuals have you know made a life here it's in you know we look at what happened of course trump didn't win a second term but those programs were put into place no one was deported uh so

Preston:
and that's the biggest thing is that they are trying this approach uh because they know that if they get these temporary changes in this population is not going to be going anywhere

Spencer:
they're here and if they're here and they're kind of in this quasi-permanent status that down the road lends the democrats even more ammunition to say hey we need to go ahead and give these individuals citizenship the right to vote and everything that welfare benefits everything that goes along with it so in other words there it seems like they're kind of changing from just massive amnesty to maybe more of a long play here

Preston:
yeah it is and it actually reminds me of something in the early stages when they were talking about this reconciliation bill the infighting between moderate democrats and uh the more progressive far left democrats uh and uh and this was related to spending so the moderates wanted to fund a smaller number of programs for a longer period of time right because they said we want to fully fund a handful of things that will in their words would make really lasting changes for the long haul the progressives on the other hand came back and said no we want to fund as many programs as possible but fund them for a shorter period of time banking on the political calculation that it would be nearly impossible to take funding away after I expire

Spencer:
right and that does that does fall in line with what we've seen historically whenever you put a program into place it's very difficult to end it to take money away from a program that you've already given to

Preston:
exactly and that I they did so they did not end up doing that but they're using that same political calculation I think for plan c of immigration uh amnesty and that's what we're seeing right now is they're banking on the idea of giving these people 10 years of protection very similar to daca on the political hopes that the temperature will have risen so much after 10 years of these people having legal quasi-legal status that you know screw it we're going to just amnesty them ten years down the road again

Spencer:
maybe five years down the road exactly maybe not even go that long and that's where you would be looking at again some of this long play because you could be looking at you know you know before major elections down the road either given individual citizenship or permanent status trying to integrate them into society so uh how likely are they to succeed in this third attempt

Preston:
so it's um because they're going at such a different angle the first two attempts were largely the exact same thing they pretty much watered down plan b was a watered-down version of plan a and the parliamentarian said again this is the same it's the same thing I ruled on this before this will be interesting what we've seen so far is that the parliamentarian does not has not accepted that major legalization whether it be through a pathway to citizenship or some sort of quasi-legal status has enough bearing on the federal budget to justify its inclusion in the senate bill and even members of the house are saying that where they've said look behind closed doors we're putting this in because we need to fulfill a campaign promise knowing full well the that the parliamentarian will strip it out the senate will vote on a version of this that does not include immigration reform and then it'll come back to us and we'll deal with it then so it I am I am slightly optimistic that the parliamentarian on the senate side will strip this house right this will be passed on the house side well I believe it will be passed on the house side I think that speaker pelosi will get her ducks in a row and get um the democrats to pass this there are some moderate democrats who have said they will not pass this without a cbo score I bet you know they have concerns about this bill having to do with top line numbers not necessarily immigration um whether this comes into the final version that the senate and the house would have to meet on I don't know there are there are house members who have said they will not support this without immigration changes lou correa has said that

Spencer:
right and that's the argument you're looking at with the house right now is you've got moderates like you mentioned who want to see this score they don't want to see it get too radical on those and on the same on the opposite side you have the most radical members of the house saying well I’m just not going to vote for it unless you give us our entire wish list so and then of course on the senate side there's the well-documented struggle of you know again is this going to be too much is it too big and if they do water it down send it back to the house are these radical members going to be willing to vote for it so even if this makes it into the house final house version even if the senate parliamentarian rules it's okay it's a far cry from assuming that you know this is going to end up becoming law

Preston:
right and so I I’m not uh I don't think that it will be included I in the in the final bill um there are so many moving parts (right) the parliamentarian so far has indicated that no almost no number of changes to immigration legalization would impact the budget in such a way that it would be germane and would clear the byrd rule which is required for reconciliation um so to in a short way to answer your question I am I do not think this will be included that does not mean that we are giving up the fight on this

Spencer:
right as we're seeing they're gonna keep it seems like they're just determined to keep trying
Preston:
and that and that calculus changes if the parliamentarian says you know what this sure this does have somewhat of an effect and you can tell in documents that the house committee on the judiciary democrats have sent out they are highlighting almost exclusively the economic benefits of this in their in what they released um the top line says immigrants are innovators job creators consumers with enormous spending power that drive our economy and create employment opportunities they highlight they uh that this bill would increase tax contributions by 10 billion they would increase contributions to the economy by 17 billion they talk about uh how people that now have legal status would earn more money because they could have better jobs that so they are getting nothing necessary

Spencer:
it's mostly all again this joe biden this is all malarkey and we've actually we've written a rebuttal this the numbers from this comes from a forward.us mark zuckerberg's organization and we rebutted that on our on our fair blog immigrationreform.com noting that it's an old trick that these mass immigration lobbyists like to use to mention an increase in taxes paid an increase in the economy which if you look at our entire gdp it comes out to like 0.0001 percent it's negligible but they leave out the costs (exactly) they leave out the hundreds of millions in costs that would offset and so over time this would actually be a massive fiscal drain uh but you're not going to hear that everything they're going to pitch is going to avoid that so I pulling on this topic is historically low barely 20 percent of americans at this point want to see or approve of the efforts of joe biden and the democrats on immigration so and again this is probably speculative but why are democrats so desperate to misuse the reconciliation process to pass an extremely unpopular piece of legislation

Preston:
right so this is a mistake where you you're they're playing to a campaign promise that they made and they think but they see the this activist wing of the democratic party which includes promises to amnesty every legal alien in the country they see that as a critical part of their coalition (right) and they have been getting really hit hard by members of that of that group uh there was a staged walkout by open borders groups with um members of the immigration policy staff from the white house

Spencer:
it's one of the most cringy things I’ve ever seen a staged zoom walkout

Preston:
yeah very you know it hits really hard when you don't even have we don't even have access to the building I’m sure that wouldn't have happened if they were actually invited to the white house by the way (no) but uh it's it so they are getting hit really hard on people who they genuinely believe helped carry them over the finish line in 2020 they're (right) I don't think that it's some sort of you know nefarious plot to you know I really think that people in the white house and in congressional democratic leadership believe that this is a segment of the population that led them to victory in 2020 whether or not that's true is very debatable but they think that they owe them this and so they are trying um and to be frank they're trying harder than I thought they would um considering that they've used the you know the latino immigration vote as a political pawn for you know for two decades

Spencer:
especially considering how much they how much faith this segment has always put in the polls and you know just look at what the polls say now the polls are saying hey we don't want you to do this americans don't support this

Preston:
right and I think a lot of it too it does boil down to I think congressional democratic leadership knows that they are going to lose at least one chamber in 2022. every indication every poll the election results from new jersey and virginia (right) pointing towards a red wave in 2022

Spencer:
so if you want to get something passed now's that it's now or never (exactly) and so like the first two years when trump was elected like it you had to pass stuff then and we saw what happened after that was just gridlocked

Preston:
and with obama um there were people there were representatives who representatives and um and not necessarily senators because they kept the senate after the first midterm but in the 2010 uh midterms you saw there were democratic house members who lost their seat because of their vote for obamacare (right) but they the democrats had told themselves this is such a big priority for us that we're willing to lose (sacrifice just to get it) yeah um whether or not immigration is at that level yet I’m not sure I do think that they see this overall effort the overall bill which includes all kinds of other things I do think there are segments of the democratic party who believe it is such an important bill for them that they are willing to sacrifice the 2022 midterms

Spencer:
and I do think they look at it you know again the bigger picture and think this is the only win we will have right at this point it's the only thing that even some of these you know moderate democrats who may not be in swing states but they don't have a lot of buffer room if they need something to campaign on so they can say hey that highway I fixed and don't think about all the other pork and everything else that was included on this bill as well you know they've got to have something to bank on and yeah they see this as an opportunity to sneak in as much um you know as much as they can on the rest of their wish list and try to cover it underneath the kind of the primary infrastructure aspect of this bill

Preston:
right and I guess my final point on this would be I think this was a huge miscalculation by both the white house and congressional democrats where they legislated like they had super majority a super majority mandate (right they thought they had complete control of their) and president joe biden is he is running the white house and working with congressional leadership to make transformational change kind of how franklin d roosevelt did (right) but people did not vote for transformational change in 2020. you know a lot of people voted um you know you know for the lesser of two evils in many respects and you're seeing that come out in elections in virginia where there was a 12-point swing in independent voters you're seeing that in new jersey and so I think this might be a wake-up call for the democrats to say hey maybe people didn't necessarily even for us as much as they voted against what they perceived

Spencer:
right and they're seeing now from the virginia election that the whole orange man bad campaign slogan doesn't work anymore because voters (yeah when he's not office) yeah voters are less concerned about someone who was in office last year by 2022 several years ago and more concerned about the policies they're seeing and enacted right now so well I think that's a great place to stop today so for everyone listening we hope you've enjoyed today's episode learned something new about these important issues and I also want to encourage everyone to listen to our previous episodes if you have time we're getting close to 50 episodes here also be sure to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends and family for more information about fair and our mission please visit www.fairus.org you can also find us on twitter @FAIRImmigration and on facebook as well and you can go watch a lot of our uh previous uh episodes not just of this podcast but our other publications or other videos on youtube as well so until next time this has been understanding immigration presented by fair