'Dirty Dozen': Mike Lee Highlights Policy Disasters in Senate Border Bill

Spencer Brown reporting for Townhall 

As opposition grows to the Senate bill being sold as a bipartisan deal to address Biden's border crisis and provide supplemental security funding for Ukraine, U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) pulled together a "dirty dozen" list of "disasters" in the legislation that clocks in at a hefty 370 pages. 

Less than a full day after the bill text was dumped on Sunday night, Sen. Lee released his list and blasted the "so-called border deal" for not, in fact, securing the U.S.-Mexico border and instead worsening Biden's crisis. 

Among the "disasters" enumerated by Lee: the legislation's provision that "codifies catch and release," "allows up to 1.8 million illegal aliens to enter before temporarily closing parts of the border," and "funds sanctuary cities and NGOs sending illegals around the country," including $2.3 billion for a "slush fund" for services related to unaccompanied illegal immigrant children. As sub-points, Lee calls out the loopholes that are all but certain to be abused by the Biden administration, the limited duration of the emergency authority to shut down the border, and the presidential discretion that would allow Biden to reopen the border at any time he deems it to be in the "national interest" to suspend the emergency authority.

What's more, Lee points out that the Senate bill also "subsidizes free, taxpayer-funded legal counsel to illegal aliens" and further "expands parole instead of limiting it," allowing the Biden administration to continue abusing it and offer parole for an "urgent humanitarian reason" selected by DHS Secretary Mayorkas.

Lee's list also includes the bill's provision to "increase green cards by 50,000 per year for five years" — including 32,000 family-based green cards and 18,000 employment-based green cards — something that "[h]urts American workers by importing cheap foreign labor" in addition to work permits for adult children of H1-B visa holders, thereby establishing "indefinite work permits" for "an estimated 250,000 adult children of H-1B nonimmigrant visa holders who will be competing for jobs with recent college graduates." The Senate bill's inclusion of "immediate work permits to every legal released from custody after they pass an initial screening" was also singled out by Lee.

That screening itself is also being weakened, another aspect of the legislation that made the Utah Republicans list, by codifying Biden's "asylum officer regulation" which allows USCIS asylum officers to grant asylum "without review by an Immigration Judge, ensuring significantly higher approval rates."

While these are largely new or expanded provisions, what's missing from the border bill also drew Lee's attention and ire. Notably, there's "nothing to deport illegals" in the legislation, nor is there any "immediate funding for the wall" and instead current money would be rescinded and reallocated to a later fiscal year "so that President Biden and Sec. Mayorkas don't have to build any wall and can delay spending money on the border wall."

Rounding out Lee's "dirty dozen" list is the bill's creation of a "pathway to citizenship for over 60,000 poorly vetted Afghans who were brought to the country due to President Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan."