Slotkin: No Contradiction In Border Security & Humane Treatment
March 18, 2021
By Jon King / jking@whmi.com
8th District Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin is shaping up to be a key figure in the ability of House Democrats to push through a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration system.
A major reform of the system is one of President Biden’s stated top priorities with Democrats introducing the U.S. Citizenship Act last month as a path toward that goal. However, disagreements between liberal Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York Pramila Jayapal of Washington and members of the more moderate wing, including Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Slotkin, have slowed up efforts at bringing the legislation to the floor.
One House Democrat quoted by The Hill said their sense was that, “details of the larger immigration bill are far from determined, especially within the ideological bounds of the Democratic Caucus,” explaining that, “What Pramila and Alex might want are very different from what Abigail and Elissa could live with.”
That difference was on display Wednesday when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas testified for the first time before the House Homeland Security Committee, of which Slotkin is a member. Slotkin told Mayorkas that while she is fully on board with reforming the system, she is concerned the legislation as presently written won’t achieve that result. Mayorkas said he believes the bill is a fundamental reform to a system, “we all know is broken.”
There is no contradiction between providing security for our borders and treating people humanely. Nor is there any problem keying immigration to our economic needs, and providing a lawful way to come and work here. pic.twitter.com/CeHMRkG61H
— Rep. Elissa Slotkin (@RepSlotkin) March 17, 2021
The main provision in the U.S. Citizen Act is a pathway to citizenship for the roughly 11 million people living in the country illegally. In addition to modernizing border technologies, it would also increase financial assistance to countries in Central America as a way to discourage the type of mass migration, particularly of unaccompanied minors, currently being experienced at the southern border.
Republicans have been highly critical of Democrats in general, and the Biden Administration specifically, for their border policies, saying that the Trump Administration’s policy of keeping asylum-seekers in Mexico while they went through the process was key to staunching that flow. Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said his judgment, the Trump administration, "did a masterful job in negotiating the Remain in Mexico policy and the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Central America,"
In 2014, when Mayorkas was DHS Dep. Secretary, the U.S. saw a surge of migrants at our southern border and the Obama Administration called it a crisis. Yet, this administration refuses to acknowledge the current crisis at our southwest border. https://t.co/yUzsuFEtc2
— Michael McCaul (@RepMcCaul) March 17, 2021
Slotkin pushed back on that narrative, saying the previous administration’s policy resulted in putting “kids in cages” as a deterrent, insisting that “There is no contradiction between providing significant security for our borders and treating people humanely. There is no contradiction between keying immigration to our economic needs, and providing a lawful way to come and work here so they don’t have to cross the border illegally.”