Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is pushing for a final up-or-down vote on comprehensive immigration reform by the end of next week. “Comprehensive” is another word for unread. Lawmakers need to know what’s in this bill before they pass it. It’s full of questionable provisions that so far haven’t been subject to much debate.
One portion of the Senate bill would loosen the rules for seeking asylum. Sec. 3401 removes the one-year deadline for applying for asylum; Sec. 3504 adds another layer of appeals for aliens turned down; and Sec. 3502 allows the U.S. attorney general to provide government-funded legal counsel to aliens, something current law bars.
Americans have nothing to gain from loosening these rules. Ask the people of Boston. The Chechen parents of the Boston Marathon bombers were asylum seekers. Before them, in 1993, a Pakistani asylum seeker, Ramzi Yousef, bombed the World Trade Center. Another Pakistani asylum seeker, Mir Aimal Kasi, gunned down two CIA agents in Virginia. If anything, the U.S. should stop granting asylum to people from countries that spawn terrorists.
