Senate ‘Gang of Six’ Negotiates Republican Giveaway on Migration

Roughly 30 Republican senators are backing the House’s H.R.2 migration stabilization bill — but a gang of six senators, including three Republicans, are drafting a giveaway “compromise” bill.

“H.R.2 should be the focus,” said a policy analyst who favors pro-American migration laws, adding:

There’s no reason to preemptively surrender good border security legislation before we’re forced to negotiate [with the House]. What the Senators who are supporting that [compromise] package are doing essentially is preemptively surrendering, preemptively giving away very important pieces of H.R. 2 before they’re even being forced to do so.

“They’re negotiating with themselves” instead of with Democrats, he added.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Thom Tillis (R-NC), and James Lankford (R-OK), are working with three Democrats to write a pretend compromise in the end-of-year budget battles over funding for Israel, Ukraine, and President Joe Biden’s border security agency, he said, adding that their plan is “not going do anything of any substance.”

The compromise legislation will likely be touted by Democrats and their media allies in January as they try to create a political stampede that will overpower Republicans’ popular demands for substantial policy change to migration laws, he said.

“Lankford is now working to turn a one-page summary of the party’s border plan into legislation,” Politico reported.

Behind closed doors, additional Republican senators are likely cooperating with the group of three.

The three Democrat-aligned senators in the group are Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO).

In 2013, Bennet joined with Graham to push the failed 2013 “Gang of Eight” amnesty that would have cut Americans’ wages for a decade or more.

The evidence so far is that the Gang of Six compromise includes few substantial changes in current laws, the immigration analyst said. It also appears to leave intact many of the alternative loopholes that Biden’s border deputies will use to keep importing millions of poor, desperate, indebted, and compliant migrants, he said.

But the 3o-plus cosponsors on the Senate’s version of the House bill H.R. 2 may block the stampede planned by the “Gang of Six.”

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The H.R.2 bill is being pushed by nearly all of the GOP House caucus, led by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). “We’re going to force the issue — and people want us to,” Johnson said.

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Meanwhile, multiple Democrat senators are denouncing any compromise related to asylum and other doorways, and various Latino groups claim to be boycotting the negotiations.

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