Immigration

House GOP Bill Would Cut Foreign Aid Over Immigration

Written by SK Ashby

The House appropriations bill that would cut the State Department's funding if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails are not released in a timely manner apparently had another awful measure tucked inside of it.

The bill also contains a provision that would cut assistance for Central American nations if they don't solve our immigration problems for us.

The House bill would direct the secretary of State to suspend assistance to Central American countries if their governments don’t take steps to improve border security, enforce laws to reduce the flow of illegal migrants to the U.S., conduct public outreach campaigns about the journey’s dangers, and cooperate with U.S. federal agencies to facilitate and expedite the return of migrants to their native countries.

Cutting assistance would undoubtedly make the situation worse and actually increase the flow of immigrants. That is, after all, why so many have fled. They come to American looking for a better life.

It is the responsibility of Congress, and thus Republicans, to make the compromises necessary to properly manage our immigrant population. They have refused to take the necessary steps to fix what they call a "broken system" because their idea of fixing it is mass deportation.

They refused to compromise even when congressional Democrats offered them the biggest expansion of border security funding ever.

From my perspective, this idea that other countries should solve our problems for us is more or less a demand that Central American nations take steps to imprison their own citizens within their borders; a perspective shared by a large number of advocacy groups who are urging the Senate Appropriations Committee to strip the language from the House version of the bill during mark up.

“These conditions would encourage the implementation of policies that violate the right of people to emigrate, a right enjoyed by all people, and would dangerously undermine the right of persecuted people to seek territorial access to a country of asylum,” the groups wrote in a letter Monday to the Senate panel.

To put it simply, the congressmen who sponsored the language do not give a fuck about "persecuted people" if they come from Central America.

That is unless they're rogue home-schoolers. Then they might care. House Republicans advanced a bill several months ago that would grant asylum to home schoolers while making it more difficult to seek asylum if you're fleeing violence.

The march toward a federal government shutdown continues.