House Passes Largest Amnesty in American History. What’s Next?

On Friday morning, the House passed a $1.75 trillion social spending package dubbed “Build Back Better,” which contains the largest amnesty in American history as well as more cheap foreign labor for large corporations. Here is what you need to know:

• After amnesty was rejected twice by the Senate parliamentarian, House Democrats went full steam ahead and passed the bill with a third version of amnesty for some 7 million illegal aliens.

• The amnesty does not include a pathway to citizenship, but provides deportation relief and work authorization to millions of illegal aliens. It also “recaptures” unused immigrant visas from previous years to address visa backlogs, a clear giveaway to giant technology corporations. This rewards these companies with a nearly unlimited supply of cheap foreign labor that would depress wages and displace American workers.

• The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the bill’s immigration provisions would add $115.1 billion to the deficit over 2022-2031. Not only is this estimate billions more than the original estimate, it is a 10-year budget window that does not reflect longer-term entitlement costs associated with this amnesty. With entitlement costs, this amnesty will exceed $1 trillion.

• The bill now heads to the Senate, where senators from both parties have the opportunity to prevent Democrats from subverting longstanding Senate rules, and strip away the unpopular immigration provisions.

• In the short-term, the immigration provisions of the bill would result in even more illegal immigration and cost burdens on American taxpayers. In the long-term, as the people gaining amnesty become eligible for the full panoply of public benefits, the price tag will balloon above a trillion.