Senator Rand Paul said today that he will not support the Senate Immigration Reform Bill when it comes up for a vote this week:
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday that the Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill does not do enough to address border security, and he does not plan to support it in its current form.
“Without some congressional authority and without border security first, I can’t support the final bill,” Paul said on CNN’s “State of The Union.”
Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) struck a deal over a border security amendment last week that is expected to assuage the concerns of some Republicans, and help the bill win passage in the Senate by a comfortable margin. But the measure was not enough to win over Paul, whose own amendment to allow Congress to review and vote on border security status annually was rejected.
“It should certainly put to rest any issue regarding border security,” Corker said of his amendment on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” The House will begin voting on the amendment on Monday.
But not all Republicans are sold. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), an opponent of the bill, said that even with the amendment, the bill is not acceptable. “This bill grants amnesty first and a near promise of enforcement in the future, even with Corker-Hoeven Amendment,” Sessions said on “Face The Nation.”
Paul, of course, had proposed his own immigration reform plan that included provisions that would delay any real immigration reform until both Houses of Congress had certified that the border was “secure,” a solution that comes across to me at least as being completely impractical. Paul’s decision here, though, may not influence many other votes. The two Senators most likely to follow his moves in an area like this, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, are already on record as opposing the bill.
