There’s really nothing in this bill (regarding enforcement) that’s not already in current law. Here’s how Marco Rubio put it:
*Let’s be clear. There have never been zero illegal people getting into America. But how did this happen? Let’s start with our law, because when people talk about immigration around here, they pretend like immigration is completely unregulated. They say, “We need new laws to fix it, because the laws are all messed up, and we don’t regulate the law.” Immigration is a complex area of law, but at its core, quite simple. Here’s what immigration law in America is. It says: “These are the people that are allowed to be in the United States of America, and if someone who is not allowed to be in the United States of America enters illegally, you are to detain them through removal,” meaning you are to detain them until their case is resolved or they are removed from the country. *
That is the law of the United States, and that’s been the law of the United States for quite some time. Now, we’ve always had exceptions. They’re narrow exceptions. For example, if the Dalai Lama shows up at the border of the United States and says, “I’m here because the Chinese are trying to kill me,” you can grant him an exception. These are supposed to be narrow exceptions, and they’re supposed to apply to individuals, case by case. But for the first time in American history, the president of the United States has decided to make the exception into the rule. It became the rule that if you arrived here, we would not detain you. I just gave you the numbers of the people who were released. The exceptions ate up the rule, and that’s how this happens.
He goes on:
They don’t know what the immigration law is. Here’s what they know. They know people that have come here, turned themselves in, said, “I’m here blah blah blah,” and were released. They know people who did it, and those people tell other people, and the traffickers advertise it. Human beings are incentive-based creatures. That’s why we pass laws to punish crime. That’s why we raise taxes on cigarettes. When people know that if you can make it inside of the United States and turn yourself in, your chances of being released are 85%, 90%, more people are going to come. The numbers don’t lie.
But the worst part of this utterly ■■■■ bill is that it effectively changes asylum to pretty much fit ANYONE showing up at the border!
The law says they can do it under the convention against torture, which is an international treaty. But let me tell you how that’s been applied. How it’s been applied is that the convention against torture isn’t just used against, “We’re going to send you back somewhere where they’re going to waterboard you.” How the convention against torture has been applied is, most of the activist groups argue that we cannot remove people from this country if we’re going to send them back to a place where they might be kidnapped or where they might be assaulted, not by just the government, but by non-government criminal gangs. Basically, if you come from a country where gangs kidnap people, kill people, extort people, threaten people, and assault people, we cannot send you back there, under the convention of torture. That’s their interpretation of it. My friends, that’s like 100 countries on Earth. That’s almost every country represented in the number of people that arrive at the border.
