Immigration in the Lame Duck

Summary

Before the 118th Congress is sworn in on January 3, the current Congress will likely consider several immigration measures in the “lame duck” session with the backdrop of a historic meltdown at the border. In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, experts at the Center join Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and host of the podcast, discuss the issues to watch for in the closing weeks of the 117th Congress.

George Fishman, a senior legal fellow, and Jessica Vaughan, the Center’s director of policy, focus on three specific measures. First, the “Equal Access to Green cards for Legal Employment” (Eagle) Act, supported by Big Tech, which would dispense with per-country caps for employment-based green cards and offer permanent work permits to many ostensibly temporary workers on green-card waiting lists.

Second, there is a bipartisan effort to provide green cards to so-called Dreamers, adult illegal immigrants who came as minors, many of whom have work permits through the legally dubious DACA program. This push is driven in part by the likelihood that DACA will soon be declared unlawful by the courts.

Finally, the panel discusses the possibility of a farmworker bill containing both an amnesty for illegal aliens and an expanded guestworker program. The last farm worker amnesty, crafted by current Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer when he was in the House, was the most fraud-ridden immigration program in the nation’s history.