As the U.S. Senate takes up a new bill making myriad changes to the country’s policies at the southern border, U.S. Senator Cory Booker has made it clear that he will be voting no.
“I will not vote for the bill coming to the Senate floor this week because it includes several provisions that will violate Americans’ shared values,” Booker said in a statement last night. “These provisions would not make us safer. This bill also misses key components that can go much further in solving the serious immigration problems facing our nation.”
Earlier this year, Senate negotiators authored a compromise bill that included both foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel and strict new immigration laws, in the hopes that putting the two separate policy priorities together would engender support from both Republicans and Democrats. But the plan backfired, and Republicans scuttled the bill for being insufficiently tough on the border after former President Donald Trump said he opposed it.
Congress ended up approving foreign aid to Israel and Ukraine anyways last month in a separate bill that didn’t include any immigration-related language. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer decided this week to forge ahead with a vote on the immigration-related provisions of the earlier, scuttled bill, in an attempt to portray Democrats as the party with solutions for the issues at the border.
The bill seems destined for failure, since it’s attracting opposition both from Republicans, who view it as a political stunt, and from many Democrats who have no interest in making conservative immigration policy changes with no trade-offs. Booker is among the latter group.
When the original immigration-and-foreign-aid bill came up for a procedural vote in February, Booker was among those who voted in support, saying that he was dubious of the border policies but that the Israel and Ukraine provisions were too important to oppose. Now, with foreign aid already settled and dealt with, there’s little incentive for Booker to support a border-only bill.
“The proposed bill would exclude people fleeing violence and persecution from seeking asylum and instead doubles down on failed anti-immigrant policies that encourage irregular immigration,” the senator said last night. “It does not provide relief for Dreamers, farmworkers, or other longtime American residents, nor take steps to attract and retain the world’s brightest young minds. It would not completely relieve problems at the border because it does not address the root causes of regional migration. Any discussion on immigration reform must include these common sense, popular policies that would make meaningful changes to our immigration system.”
As for New Jersey’s other senator, Bob Menendez, he has not yet said anything publicly about the new bill, and it’s not clear whether he’ll be in Washington to vote on it at all; he’s currently on trial on federal corruption charges, though that trial is on hiatus for the remainder of the week.
But Menendez was among the most vociferous opponents of the original border deal, refusing to vote for it even when it included foreign aid provisions he supported.
“Accepting this deal as written would be an outright betrayal to the communities we have sworn an oath to protect and represent,” Menendez said back in February of the compromise bill. “If these changes were being considered under Trump, Democrats would be in outrage, but because we want to win an election Latinos and immigrants now find themselves on the altar of sacrifice.”
Given the strength of that language, Menendez seems near-certain to oppose the new border bill, too. Booker and Menendez are typically aligned with Schumer, President Joe Biden, and other Democratic leaders in Washington – but on this issue, they may both be set to rebel.