The “bipartisan border bill” has been front and center in the presidential election, but it is often presented to the public without clarity on what the bill would actually do. In May, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) introduced S. 4361, the Border Act of 2024. This bill includes nearly identical provisions to a bipartisan immigration proposal introduced earlier this year. Those provisions were negotiated jointly by a group of Republican and Democratic senators as a compromise on supplemental government funding. Although almost all Senate Republicans ultimately voted against the Border Act, most of the provisions in the bill previously garnered bipartisan support. If passed in the future, the Border Act would make significant changes to the U.S. immigration system.
The bill would take important steps to address the challenges posed by a higher number of people arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. It would accelerate the screening time of migrants arriving at the border and provides an influx of funding to immigration agencies. It would also offer overdue protections to some vulnerable immigrant communities by expanding lawful pathways to status.
However, the bill would also severely restrict a person’s right to seek asylum by rapidly expelling migrants in a manner that could jeopardize security and lead to further mismanagement. It additionally funds an expansion of the broken immigration detention system without increasing oversight. While the bill offers a glimpse into what effective bipartisan solutions to the U.S. immigration system could look like under a future administration, it also borrows failed policies from the past.
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