GOP Win: Kevin McCarthy Blocks Democrats’ Migration Expansion

Nearly all GOP legislators voted Thursday afternoon to block a massive inflow of wage-cutting migrant workers and to stop another $300 million giveaway to Ukraine.

All Democrats voted for the amendment that would give away American jobs to foreigners who get H-2B and H-2A visas, and also to spend another $300 million for Ukraine’s war with Russia.

Credit for the successful GOP win goes to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca).

He is trying to keep the GOP caucus united while passing agency funding bills for spending in 2024, which starts on October 1.

The amendment vote was part of the run-up to the vote on the budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which took place late Thursday night.

For months, the DHS bill has been delayed by GOP splits over the Ukraine war and disagreements over President Joe Biden’s open-border policies. It has also been divided by McCarthy’s effort to bypass regular debates by stuffing Congress’ 12 spending bills into a huge “Continuing Resolution.”

But McCarthy kept the party’s populist and business factions together and late Thursday, he passed a DHS spending bill with 220 voters against the Democrats’ 208 nays.

His DHS bill includes careful policy changes — not just showy budget cuts — that block Biden’s deputies from welcoming, transporting, and housing millions of job-seeking, wage-cutting migrants for jobs that would otherwise go to better-paid Americans.

The Hill.com reported:

The DHS funding bill includes $91.515 billion in total discretionary spending for the department. The money includes more than $2 billion to build a wall along the southern border, $496 million for 22,000 Border Patrol agents, and upwards of $3.55 billion for custody operations.

Republicans say the bill will provide millions in savings by rejecting funds for electric vehicles and DHS Headquarters consolidation, as well as rejecting Biden administration funding requests for emergency food and shelter for migrants, among other measures.

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The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) described the visa giveaway that was buried in the draft spending bill:

A provision inserted to benefit non-agricultural employers would blow the lid off the 66,000 annual cap on H-2B guest workers by exempting returning visa holders from counting against that limit, as though they won’t have the same harmful [pocketbook] impact on similarly skilled American workers if they’ve been here before … [Employers also] want an end to the temporary or seasonal nature of the [uncapped] H-2A program … [because] sectors of the agricultural industry, such as dairy and sheepherding that are neither seasonal nor temporary have not had access to the H-2A program.

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