Immigration-Wise, the Fiscal Year Ended with a Whimper, not a Bang

By David North on October 2, 2018

At one point it looked as if President Trump might bring on a government shutdown over "The Wall" by refusing to sign an appropriations bill without substantial funding for its construction.

At another point, it appeared that the nation-of-origin provisions would be removed from the numerically limited segments of the immigration act, allowing for the admission of many more Indian and Chinese migrants at the expense of all others, with such a clause included in a spending bill. The federal fiscal year ended on September 30.

Neither of these things happened, or at least not yet. The president signed both a Department of Defense (and Labor and Education and Health and Human Services) funding bill along with a continuing resolution regarding other departmental spending without either of those controversial elements. The D.C. term for it is "minibus", since it is a smaller version of the omnibus spending bills that have been passed in recent years.

Included in the current spending package is yet another extension of the main part of the EB-5 (immigrant investor) program, keeping it alive until December 7 of this year. No surprise there.

The nation-of-origin language is presumably still a part of the pending Homeland Security spending bill, at least in the House version thereof, and thus may revive itself in the future. There are also provisions for some wall spending in both the Senate and the House versions of that legislation.

The president has been under pressure from congressional Republicans, it has been widely reported, not to shut down the government just before the mid-term elections, something that would have caused GOP candidates major headaches.

Topics: Politics