(March 18, 2021, Washington, D.C.) – The following statement was issued by Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), in response to House passage of the American Dream and Promise Act (H.R. 6) and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act (H.R. 1603) amidst a historic border surge:
"The mass amnesty bills advanced by the House today are bad policy, even under the best of circumstances. Passing them in the midst of a full-blown border crisis driven by the Biden administration is an affront to the integrity of our system, as well as to the safety and security of the American people.
"These bills do not acknowledge the crisis at the border nor the abuse of our asylum process, much less offer any steps to remedy the situation. Instead, they offer a clear indication that amnesty and unchecked migration are now the biggest priorities of Democrats on the issue.
"What happened today is no surprise – lawmakers have taken no initiative to address the crisis and instead are worsening it by advancing bills that incentivize migrants to come to the country illegally. The only crisis, as far as all Democrats and a handful of Republicans are concerned, is the lack of amnesty for illegal aliens already here, and these bills aim to 'fix' only that problem.
"Senate Republicans must hold firm and oppose both the American Dream and Promise Act and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act if they are brought to the floor in the upper chamber. The border crisis is raging, and the American people are watching – address the crisis, do not exacerbate it."
American Dream and Promise Act (H.R. 6)
"This legislation grants a pathway to citizenship to roughly 3 million illegal aliens who are already in the country—which is well beyond the 700,000 or so active Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients. The bill also provides a pathway to citizenship to hundreds of thousands of migrants under temporary relief and humanitarian programs, including Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED). It also does not contain any immigration enforcement provisions to address the current crisis on the southern border."
Farm Workforce Modernization Act (H.R. 1603)
"The Farm Workforce Modernization Act would amnesty approximately 1.5 million illegal alien farmworkers, expand the H-2A guestworker program as unemployment remains high, add 40,000 green cards to the EB-3 category, and only mandate E-Verify across the agriculture sector. The bill title is deceptive; the legislation does nothing to actually modernize America's agricultural workforce. That would require automating many of these jobs using advanced technology and programs designed to give farmers access to those innovations. Further, the framework for improving legal farm labor already exists – fix problems within the current H-2A program. This, and encouraging the adoption of labor- and cost-saving automated harvesting technologies, represents true modernization. Another senseless amnesty at the worst possible time does not."
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