Keller @ Large: Border security truth test shows many claims are false
BOSTON - Things are not looking good for the bipartisan border security bill.
President Biden supports the plan, but former President Trump told Republicans on Capitol Hill to shut it down.
Meanwhile, the measure is enmeshed in a crossfire of dubious claims. We put some of them through the truth test.
For instance, Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise tweeted over the weekend that supporters of the bill don't want you to know it "accepts 5,000 illegal immigrants a day...a magnet for more illegal immigration."
But Doris Meissner, former U.S. Commissioner of Immigration now with a non-partisan think tank, says that's false, that when migration attempts surge past 5,000 a day for a week, the bill triggers tighter-than-normal asylum standards that will screen out most migrants. "The majority of that 5,000 would be returned to their countries after that screening process," she said.
Left-wing critics of the plan, like Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, are claiming it would "turn away asylum seekers without due process." Again, not true, said Meissner: "The asylum system is being tightened and streamlined, it is not being eliminated."
And one more immigration claim still resonating years after Trump rode it the White House: Migrants are a key source of lethal Fentanyl importation. "Fentanyl comes through our ports of entry; it comes almost entirely by American citizens bringing drugs into the country," said Meissner. "It is not migrants who are bringing drugs into the U.S."
What are the chances of anything productive being done about the border in this environment? Slim to none and slim just left town.
Keep in mind, immigration reform has been a third-rail of our politics for close to half a century now, and the debate isn't getting saner or more truth-based. But with Biden vowing to make a major campaign issue of Trump's undermining of the bill, voters will have their say in November.
And maybe what they say might break the logjam.