For centuries, millions of people sought American citizenship and played by the rules: apply, undergo financial and health reviews, and wait patiently in line for their turn.
Our citizenship is the most prized possession our nation can offer.
In the past, our nation attracted immigrants who wanted to work, open a business, get an education and practice their faith freely.
All wanted to be citizens and melt into our culture's fabric.
Today all that has changed.
As a welfare state with some of the most generous food, healthcare, housing and social welfare programs, we attract immigrants who want to live off of those who work. We are getting hordes of people who do not share our cultural values and have no desire to.
Most importantly, instead of law-abiding immigrants, we have attracted immigrants whose first act is to violate our laws and consume public welfare services they are not entitled to— and did not pay for.
As a result, today illegal-aliens are flooding our southern border.
Our nation now finds itself in the midst of a growing health, humanitarian and security crisis at the southern border.
Despite what the Biden administration says, what's happening along the border is not normal.
The United States Border Patrol has already apprehended nearly 397,000 illegal aliens in just five months.
Why is this occurring?
The answer is simple.
Joe Biden campaigned on the promise that he would grant amnesty to every illegal alien in the United States. Smugglers and would-be migrants heard the message loudly and clearly in Central America and — globally.
The border is wide open again.
Now House Democrats, rather than addressing this crisis and fixing it, plan to ram through two amnesty bills on the House floor: H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act, and H.R. 1603, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act.
Taken together, these amnesty bills would legalize more illegal aliens than the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act amnesty legislation and give Mr. Biden his signature immigration promise.
The first of these bills — the American Dream and Promise Act — is another iteration in a long line of failed Dream Acts. Year after year these amnesty bills get introduced in Congress, and year after year they fail to become law — and for good reason!
The American Dream and Promise Act places so-called "Dreamers," Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients, and others on a pathway to citizenship in exchange for exactly zero substantive enforcement measures.
At least in years’ prior the Democrats offered some sort of window dressing to make the bill appear moderate. Unfortunately, given their tolerance and even outright embrace of "Abolish ICE," even moderate enforcement reforms appear now to be a bridge too far for House Democrats.
The bill provides amnesty to nearly three million illegal aliens, going well beyond the approximately 700,000 active Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival recipients that the bill’s supporters claimed to target.
Further, the bill contains no enforcement provisions to address the current crisis on the southern border. The eligibility requirements are extremely broad, and the bill’s underlying language makes it difficult to remove aliens that do not even qualify for the bill’s protection.
The second of these bills — the Farm Workforce Modernization Act --- is an effort to provide amnesty to over two million illegal alien farmworkers, despite already having an unlimited agricultural guestworker program, the H-2A. Notwithstanding the catchy title, the bill does nothing to actually modernize America’s agricultural workforce.
The bill shields from deportation all aliens that merely meet the eligibility criteria, which is a very low bar. These illegal alien farmworkers can eventually apply for green cards through an archaic system that resembles indentured servitude.
Depending on how long they claim to have lived in the U.S., these illegal aliens must then work anywhere between four to eight years before earning green cards.
Despite the assertions by some of my colleagues, nothing in the bill "modernizes" America’s agricultural workforce. True modernization of U.S. agriculture would entail providing farmers with incentives to invest in mechanization and automation of their farms, reducing the need for immigrant workers in the first place. These efforts would enhance American agricultural competitiveness — this amnesty does not.
There is a reason that Nancy Pelosi wants Congress to vote on these two bills on the same day. They are related, and both bills will give illegal aliens a pathway to citizenship.
Taken together, these bills would represent a significant first step in Joe Biden’s quest to fulfill his pledge to the radical wing of his party of giving amnesty to every illegal alien in the country.
The American Dream and Promise Act purportedly addresses all illegals who arrived in the United States as children, and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act addresses all illegal aliens working on farms. The only illegal aliens seemingly left out are adults working in something other than agriculture.
Taken together, these House Democrats’ legislation will provide amnesty to more than 5 million illegal aliens.
Worse still, they will have accomplished this in the middle of a border crisis that the Mr. Biden and his administration created and are choosing to ignore.
Large-scale amnesty for illegal aliens would be bad policy, even under the best of circumstances.
Amnesty in the midst of a full-blown crisis makes no sense to the American people. Unfortunately, the fix-is-in with these two bills.
As far as Democrats are concerned, the only "crisis" is the lack of amnesty for the illegal aliens already here, and these bills aim to "fix" that problem.
A better legislative solution to our crisis along the southern border is the Protect America First Act, introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., that I am a proud cosponsor.
This common-sense bill would end the Biden created crisis at our Southern border by re-asserting a zero-tolerance immigration policy, ensuring the safe return of unaccompanied alien children, reducing human trafficking, deporting criminal aliens, and ending chain migration.
I call on my House colleagues to reject these two bills and bring to the table real solutions to fix our broken immigration system, including the Protect America First Act, that give our immigration enforcement agencies the tools they need to successfully defend our borders.
Dr. Paul Gosar represents Arizona’s 4th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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