Good idea to provide more weapons aid to Ukraine (and Israel's continued invasion)?

Personally, while I agree that we need to start securing the US border, why are we pumping money into prolonging a lost war in the Ukraine, which only creates more carnage? For that matter, I'm Jewish, love Israel but am not excited to see more innocent civilians killed in Gaza. The number is 10,000 and rapidly growing. Time to wrap that up as well and play the long game against Iran.

Senate Republicans Demand U.S. Border Clampdown as Condition for Ukraine Aid

White House included immigration funding in $106 billion supplemental plan, but no policy changes

By Michelle Hackman and Lindsay Wise

Updated Nov. 6, 2023 7:37 pm ET

WASHINGTON—A group of Senate Republicans are demanding a crackdown on asylum claims at the southern border and other policy changes as a condition for backing President Biden’s $106 billion request for supplemental funding for Israel and Ukraine, the first move in what is expected to be a wrenching fight over approving the package.

The one-page proposal, put forward by a group of Republican senators including Sens. James Lankford (R., Okla.), Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), represents the opening bid in negotiations with Senate Democrats and the White House, which has signaled some openness to immigration-policy changes. Biden’s request included money for border operations, but didn’t include any policy changes.

The GOP-controlled House passed its own bill last week that provides $14.3 billion for Israel—offset by stripping money from the Internal Revenue Service—but leaves out funding for Ukraine, Taiwan and other parts of the Biden proposal. Senate Democrats have called the House GOP proposal dead on arrival and are working with Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), to craft a broader package based on the Biden request.

On Monday, the Republican group released a blueprint of the changes it would want to see to the immigration system, modeled largely on House Republicans’ border bill passed earlier this year, known as H.R. 2. Overall, the changes would make it tougher for migrants to make an asylum claim in the U.S. and more difficult to win a case if they try. Separately, the proposal looks to shut down the Biden administration’s use of an immigration tool known as humanitarian parole, which allows migrants to make appointments to enter at a legal port of entry.

“These are things that we think are very critical,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Senate Republican. “If you’re going to do a supplemental [bill] that deals with national security, this is a national-security issue.”

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, criticized the Republican plan, calling it a poor starting point for any negotiations and noted it would hurt efforts to help Ukrainian refugees. But Durbin said he is willing to talk to anyone in either party “who wants to move past the partisan bickering on this issue.”

In a statement, White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández said: “If Republicans want to have a serious conversation about reforms that will improve our immigration system, we are open to a discussion.” He said the White House disagreed with many of the policies in Senate Republicans’ proposal, highlighting that it contained no pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Illegal border crossings have reached record highs over the past two years, and the flow of migrants from countries such as Venezuela, which hadn’t typically sent large numbers of immigrants to the U.S., has meant a large number have been depending on housing provided by cities including New York and Chicago after they arrive.

The GOP changes to the asylum system would largely codify programs tried by the Trump administration. The blueprint would, for example, require the government to first try to send asylum seekers to a third “safe” country to make an asylum claim, rather than allowing them to stay in the U.S. If that is not possible, it would require the government to send asylum seekers to live in Mexico for the duration of their immigration cases, which can currently take months or years to complete.

If both programs aren’t possible—for example, if the U.S. is unable to strike deals with Mexico or other countries—migrants would be allowed to make asylum claims only at ports of entry, which the government can close or limit at will. Migrants also would be subject to a higher initial asylum screening standard, which would mean more could be quickly deported once they fail to meet the higher threshold. Migrant families traveling with underage children could be held indefinitely in immigration detention, overturning a 2015 court decision saying children must be released from federal custody after about 20 days.

The proposal would also end the practice, used most expansively by the Biden administration, to bring in classes of immigrants who don’t have visas using humanitarian parole. The administration used that power to quickly resettle 80,000 evacuated Afghan refugees, more than 150,000 Ukrainians fleeing war and, most recently, hundreds of thousands of migrants from countries including Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti.

Republicans object to the practice because they say it does an end-run on immigration limits set by Congress and allows migrants into the country with temporary legal status who otherwise have no basis to be in the U.S.

The administration has pointed to the tool as one of the best it has to give migrants an alternate route into the U.S. rather than crossing illegally.

White House officials had started quietly signaling openness to some changes to the asylum system, figuring that complaints from Democratic-run cities and states give them some political cover to move ahead, according to people involved in the conversations. In recent days, administration officials have been reaching out to prominent immigration advocates to prepare them for potential compromises they won’t like.

In particular, officials have homed in on the change to raise the threshold of an initial asylum screening, which is also included in the Republicans’ proposal, and which White House officials believe means they can deport significantly more people.

Some officials also have signaled they would be comfortable bringing back a Trump-era policy known as remain in Mexico, according to people familiar with their thinking, if it was framed as a Republican demand. The program is seen by many Republicans as one of the few that meaningfully slowed the flow of migration to the U.S.

Ahead of the Republican proposal being released, progressive Democrats in Congress and advocates started publicly pushing back against a potential deal before one was completed.

“Trying to appease Republicans with bad border policy attached to critical emergency spending or a continuing resolution will not work and is completely inappropriate,” the leaders of the Congressional Progressive, black, Hispanic and Asian caucuses said in a joint statement on Friday.

The Biden administration’s request included supplemental funding to pay for more personnel to process migrants at the southern border, including more Border Patrol agents, as well as money to reimburse cities that have been housing large migrant populations in public shelters.

Annie Linskey contributed to this article.