(The Center Square) – After Texas judges declared an invasion at the Texas-Mexico border and Gov. Greg Abbott continues to expand border security efforts, nine Texas Congressional Republicans voted to alter a federal program that critics argue facilitates chain migration. Two represent border communities: U.S. Reps. Tony Gonzalez and Mayra Flores.
They voted for an en bac amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which included an amendment sponsored by Rep. Deborah Ross, D-NC, that drastically alters and expands H1B Visa and Green Card status to nonimmigrants.
The amendment “includes age out protections for dependent children on green card applications as well as nonimmigrant dependent children;” and freezes the minor’s age to the date of when their parent’s first employment-based green card application was initiated, backdating the changes to 2002.
It “protects young adults who have been in the United States as dependent children for at least eight years by allowing them to remain dependents on their parent’s employment-based nonimmigrant visa after age 21 until a visa number for their parent’s green card becomes available or until they are able to obtain another status,” according to a summary of the amendment. It also provides employment authorization to those covered by age out protections for nonimmigrant dependent children.
Many adult visa holders have displaced American workers and the amendment “not only rewards the practice but encourages more of it,” the Foundation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) argues.
FAIR opposed the amendment, arguing it “would further expand an already broken chain migration system by awarding legal status to dependents of employment visa holders who are no longer minors and should otherwise acquire their own basis to legally immigrate to the United States.”
RJ Hauman, FAIR’s director of communications, told The Center Square, “Year after year, lawmakers in both parties craftily and unscrupulously work to pass legislation or amendments that hurt American workers in the near, mid, and long term,” including “special interest provisions that alter our immigration system in a manner that prioritizes illegal aliens, guest workers, and the business lobby.”
“The fact that this was done in the middle of a historic border crisis is even more reprehensible,” he said. “If an immigration amendment is part of the NDAA, it should address the full-scale invasion at our southern border – nothing else. Republicans in both chambers can’t simply tweet about the border crisis – they have to do all they can to actually stop it, especially when they take back control [of Congress],” Hauman added.
Maria Espinosa, who founded the America First Latinos initiative in Texas in 2015, told the Center Square the Republicans who voted for the amendment “don’t represent conservative Latinos in Texas or in America.” She also maintains that those who “ignore any law fundamentally undermine all laws.” She co-leads the Houston-based The Remembrance Project, which serves as a “voice for victims killed by illegal aliens.”
The amendment “undercuts American workers during a time of inflation and economic shrinkage,” George Rodriguez, host of the San Antonio-based El Conservador Radio Show, told The Center Square. Rodriguez, who served in the Reagan and George H. Bush administrations, says his father organized a printer’s union in 1948 in Laredo, Texas, “because Mexican workers crossed the border to undercut wages.”
U.S. policy should “encourage American employers to hire American workers,” he added. “We need to stop encouraging employers to seek foreign workers, especially when it helps illegal immigration.”
Naomi Narvaiz, a member of the Senate Republican Executive Committee with the Texas Republican Party, told The Center Square, “This is not what Texans want or need.”
“It is unconscionable that congressional representatives would vote for an amendment that would allow adult foreign-born children of visa holders to stay in the U.S. indefinitely,” she added. “Texans are not ignorant or uninformed. We must hold our representatives accountable because Texas is being invaded and our communities are being affected as our schools, grocery stores, hospitals are filling up and crime is increasing.”
Retired Border Patrol agent, Frank Lopez Jr., who’s hoping to unseat Gonzalez in November, told The Center Square, “The Ross amendment is another example of the open border insurgency within the Grand Old Party. Grassroots Americans want a secure border, but globalist representatives are fighting against them. The Republican Party is in danger of becoming the Globalist Owned Party.
“We must enforce existing laws to defend our sovereignty and protect our communities. Chain migration is a magnet which places women and children in danger because ruthless cartels are eager to force them into their human trafficking pipeline. ”
Gonzalez and Flores didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Joining them were Texas Republican U.S. Reps. Brady, Carter, Fallon, Gooden, Granger, McCaul, and Taylor.