US Senate unveils bill to strengthen border security and send aid to Ukraine and Israel

The U.S. Senate on Sunday unveiled a long-awaited $118.3 billion bipartisan bill to strengthen border security and help Ukraine and Israel. The text is expected to be put to a vote this week, but its approval is uncertain due to opposition by hardline Republicans as well as the more progressive Democrats, who hold the majority in the Senate by a single vote.

A day after House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, announced that the approval of new aid to Israel would be decoupled from aid to Ukraine due to differences between both parties, the bipartisan agreement of the upper house includes the complete package, making aid to both countries dependent on a border agreement.

Drafting the 370-page bill has required three months of negotiations led by Senators James Lankford (R-Okla.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and independent and former Democrat Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona).

At the forefront of the agreement are restrictions on asylum, a major point of friction in recent weeks. The full provision of the bill, adding funds for the border and aid to Ukraine and Israel, as well as other important foreign policy priorities, amounts to $118.3 billion, of which about $20.2 billion will go to strengthening security at the border.

The rest of the budget is divided, with $60.1 billion to support Ukraine in its war against Russia, $14.1 billion to contribute to the security of Israel, $2.4 billion for the United States Central Command and the current conflict in the Red Sea, with almost daily attacks by Houthi militias; plus $4.83 billion to support U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific area amid growing hostility between Taiwan and China, according to a Senate source cited by Reuters.

Another $10 billion would go to humanitarian aid for the civilian population of Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine, according to the same source.

“The priorities in this bill are too important to ignore and too vital to allow politics to get in the way,” Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, said in a statement. “The United States and our allies are facing multiple, complex and, in places, coordinated challenges from adversaries who seek to disrupt democracy and expand authoritarian influence around the globe.”

The leader of the Republican minority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has supported the negotiations, considering that his party would not achieve a better agreement under a White House with a GOP president. Other Republicans, however, feel that President Joe Biden could enact many of the changes in immigration policy through executive action.

Biden had asked Congress in October to pass a law that would provide additional funds for aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, in an uncertain context due to the drawn-out conflict in Ukraine, a protracted war between Israel and Hamas, and the presidential election in Taiwan, which gave victory to a candidate China considers dangerous. But Biden’s request stalled due to the insistence of the Republican-controlled House on linking it to a change in immigration policy.

Immigration, which is on track to become the central issue of the campaign for the November presidential elections, is the second biggest concern for Americans, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Wednesday. The U.S. Border Patrol detained about two million immigrants at the border in fiscal year 2023. There were more than 300,000 crossings in December alone, surpassing the 240,000 crossings recorded in each of the last four months.

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