Press Releases
Rep. Timmons Votes No on Democrats' Amnesty Bill, H.R. 6Washington needs to have a serious conversation about how our population of undocumented immigrants should be treated under the law, but H.R. 6, the “immigration bill” House Democrats pushed through earlier this week, was not a product of that type of discussion.
Washington, DC,
June 7, 2019
Once again, House Democrats chose to pass legislation that has no chance of becoming law rather than sitting down with Republican colleagues in search of real solutions. The Senate will not touch this bill, and the President has said he would veto it even if it were to reach his desk. This bill is marketed as a solution to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) issue. As you may know, in 2012, President Obama granted temporary legal status to individuals under 17 who came to this country as children. The vast majority of these individuals entered the United States through no fault of their own and have lived most of their lives in America. There are roughly 800,000 individuals who were given this temporary legal status by the Obama Administration. The legality of this executive action is still being reviewed by the Judicial Branch, but the Democrats’ bill would grant a pathway to citizenship to an estimated 2.3 to 2.7 million illegal immigrants, far more than the 800,000 DACA recipients. Additionally, and perhaps of even greater concern, the Democrats’ bill includes zero provisions that would prevent or even disincentivize similar illegal immigration practices in the future. There is no additional border security money, and there are no reforms to our asylum laws. These are exactly the kind of provisions my Republican colleagues and I would have pushed for had we been included in the development of this legislation. At best, the Democrats’ proposal is a band-aid to a major problem. At worst, the Democrats’ proposal threatens to expose our country to an even more dramatic upswing in illegal immigration than we are seeing today. I voted no. |