Day: February 15, 2024

Senate Passes Ukraine Funding Bill Without Border Protection

By Joe Guzzardi

On Super Bowl Sunday, shortly before kickoff, the Senate voted 67-27 to advance a $95.3 billion funding bill, a step toward its passage. Two days later, after an all-night session, the bill passed 70-27 but without the border security measures that the House had originally demanded.

The funding package includes $60 billion for Ukraine; $14 billion in security assistance for Israel; $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine; and $4.8 billion to support allies in the Indo-Pacific.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) spoke passionately about the urgent need for the bill’s approval. Schumer described Eastern Europe’s war-torn regions as dire as last seen during World War II. McConnell warned that failing to support Ukraine would put America’s allies at risk by giving China a “green light” to project power in Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

Highlighting the tension among Republicans that could culminate in the Senate minority leader’s removal, fellow Kentuckian GOP Senator Rand Paul called McConnell’s support for the bill “outrageous” and accused him, Schumer and President Joe Biden of “criminal neglect” by working to “send $100 billion overseas to fix someone else’s border before addressing our [own] border.” Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) charged Schumer with dictating which amendments he would be permit—“essentially all of them are not.”

To Paul’s point, days before the Senate voted to proceed on the Ukraine-Israel funding bill, it rejected a very bad immigration bill that, instead of including HR-2’s border protections, established an emergency authority to shut down the border when a 5,000 daily average alien encounters over a consecutive seven-day period is reached or 8,500 encounters occur in a single day. By law, a single alien’s entry violates immigration statutes. Worse, the Senate’s proposed bill allows Biden to suspend this authority at his discretion, which could allow for thousands more illegal immigrants to cross.

Schumer and McConnell’s urgency to help Ukraine protect its border with Russia is reflected in its unprecedented Super Bowl Sunday vote during a period when the Senate was scheduled to be on holiday. Neither Schumer nor McConnell cares about the southwest border invasion. McConnell, worried that China might interpret nixing Ukraine funding as a “green light” for aggression, is indifferent to the thousands of Chinese nationals pouring aggressively across the Southwest border.

Among the millions of migrants flooding the southern border, Chinese illegal immigrants made up the fastest-growing faction last year. In FY 2023, CBP apprehended 24,000 Chinese nationals, about 12 times the 1,970 arrests in the previous fiscal year. Since October 1 when fiscal year 2024 began, a staggering 20,000 Chinese nationals have crossed. If the 20,000 per fiscal year quarter influx continues, a projected 80,000 Chinese nationals will enter.

The annual 2023 U.S. Threat Assessment report published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) warned that China’s Communist Party (CCP) will continue efforts to achieve President Xi Jinping’s vision to make China East Asia’s preeminent power, a major global threat that will undercut U.S. influence, and “drive wedges between Washington and its partners.” In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, former DNI  director John Ratcliff wrote that “Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically.” Resisting Beijing’s attempt to reshape and dominate the world is, Ratcliff concluded, the challenge of our generation. China, national security experts agree, is the U.S.’s biggest geopolitical enemy.

Assuming Ratcliff is right, the Biden administration is failing spectacularly to meet the challenge. In December, a large group of well-dressed, military-age Chinese crossed into San Diego and surrendered to immigration agents. The El Paso sector’s Chief Patrol Agent Anthony Good told the Homeland Security Committee during a private September hearing last year that his agents suspect that the Chinese aliens are active CCP operatives, and confirmed by committee chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.)  as a “massive” concern.

Despite the potential threat that Chinese nationals represent to America, the DHS makes no attempt to detain them or no effort to locate them after border officers release them into the interior. Schumer, McConnell and Biden continue to turn a blind eye to the risks China poses, and instead are determined to pour more good money after bad into the forever Ukrainian war.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Senate Passes Ukraine Funding Bill Without Border Protection