Republican Study Committee Releases FY 2023 Budget Proposal

The Republican Study Committee (RSC) recently released its Fiscal Year 2023 budget proposal. The RSC budget would create a sustainable immigration plan to end Biden’s border crisis, curb future illegal immigration, and reform America’s deteriorating legal immigration system; initiatives proven to boost wages, grow the working and middle classes, and improve the quality of life of all Americans and already present immigrants.

The RSC is headed by Representative Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and releases an annual budget proposal outlining policy solutions to the nation’s problems; the RSC is the only non-committee congressional group to release a yearly budget proposal.

Additionally, the RSC budget proposal could serve as an ambitious to-do list for House Republicans should they retake the House of Representatives come November.

As part of the plan, the RSC pinpoints what must be done to finally end Biden’s historic border crisis, curb illegal immigration, and reform the incentives of legal immigration to aid American workers and already present immigrants alike.

The RSC explained:

• Immigration policy should protect our national security by protecting the American people from terrorism, cartels, and other threats to their safety.
• Immigration policy should prioritize American workers, help grow our middle class, raise wages, and enhance economic opportunity for all lawful residents.
• Immigration policy should respect the rule of law, along with immigrants that honor our legal immigration processes, rather than incentivize law-breaking.
• Immigration policy should aim to assimilate legal immigrants into the American family so they too can take pride in our values, history, and heritage.

In addition, the RSC mentioned that its border proposal has introduced “dozens, if not hundreds, of bills to fix America’s immigration system and the crisis at the southern border,” Breitbart News. The RSC stated that the bills include:

The RSC Budget supports Rep. Clay Higgins’ (R-LA) bill, the Finish the Wall Act, which, among other things, would complete wall construction projects proposed by President Trump. The RSC budget would also implement Rep. Matthew Rosendale’s (R-MT) bill, REMAIN in Mexico Act of 2021 to require the Biden administration to continue to implement President Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols. This budget would also implement Rep. Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) bill, the Closing Asylum Loopholes Act, which would increase the “credible fear” standard to reduce fraud in the asylum process and preserve the programs for those truly in need. Additionally, the RSC Budget supports hiring more immigration judge teams to handle backlogs and make it easier to secure our borders and ports of entry.

The RSC Budget would prohibit federal funds from going to cities or jurisdictions operating as sanctuaries for illegal immigrants. There are at least 190 of these so-called sanctuary jurisdictions across the country, and many cities have seen increased crime rates since declaring themselves sanctuary cities. Accordingly, the RSC Budget supports Rep. Guy Reschenthaler’s (R-PA) No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, which would block federal grants from flowing to these jurisdictions. The RSC Budget also supports legislation that would allow victims of illegal alien crime to sue sanctuary jurisdictions for damages. The RSC budget supports Rep. Randy Feenstra’s (R-IA) bill, Sarah’s Law, to ensure that federal authorities can detain, until ICE can process them, any illegal alien that commits a crime that results in the death of another person.

The RSC budget also supports several common-sense measures “to support border security and protect the American homeland,” reports Breitbart:

• Rep. Vicky Hartzler’s (R-MO) bill, Eradicate Crossing of Illegal Tunnels (EXIT), which would expedite the approval process that U.S. Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) agents must undergo to destroy tunnels at the border used for illegal crossings and the transportation of narcotics.
• Rep. Dan Meuser’s (R-PA) Immigration Transparency and Transit Notification Act of 2022, which would require the HHS Secretary to notify Federal, state and local health officials of any jurisdiction before placing an illegal immigrant there.
• Rep. Tom McClintock’s (R-CA) Illegal Immigrant Payoff Prohibition Act, which prohibits settlement payments to illegal aliens in connection with their inadmissibility.
• Rep. Dan Bishop’s (R-NC) Immigration Detainer Enforcement Act, which would give explicit authority to local law enforcement agencies to hold detained illegal immigrants for 48 hours to allow DHS to assume custody.
• This budget supports defunding the United Nation’s International Organization of Migration,
• Rep. Ted Budd’s (R-NC) Stopping Traffickers and Their Accomplices Act, which would require abortion providers to report suspected human trafficking to the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

In addition to the common-sense measures “to support border security and protect the American homeland,” the RSC budget also put forward several necessary reforms to the legal immigration system. They include:

• Ending the diversity lottery visa program
• Limiting chain migration to the spouses and children of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents
• Support the intent of the 14th Amendment to only confer citizenship, at birth, to someone born of at least one U.S. citizen
• Add bonding requirements to certain visas with high overstay rates to mitigate visa overstays
• Require employers to use E-Verify to ensure that potential employees are legally eligible to work in the United States

Breitbart News reports, “the proposal would also implement reforms to the H-1B Visa program to end “corrupt practices.” It would specifically implement Banks’ American Tech Workforce Act to ensure that businesses cannot undercut American wages by higher foreign H-1B workers at a lower wage:”

The bill would also replace the current lottery system used in the program, which outsourcing firms abuse by flooding the system with applications to make it more likely they receive H-1B slots. Instead, the bill would award H-1B visas to companies willing to pay the highest wages for their workers. Finally, the bill would limit the ability of Big Tech firms to contract with third-party companies to fill positions with H-1B workers for jobs that are eventually outsourced.

The RSC budget also said the United States should deny admission and permanent residence status to any individual likely to abuse the American welfare system, harkening back to President Trump’s strict Public Charge policy.

Roy Beck, President, and founder of NumbersUSA, said in a statement:

The RSC Budget contains a sweeping but practical blueprint for immigration policies that would provide a fairer playing field for American wage-earners and would begin to narrow current economic disparities that are destabilizing our society. The greatest beneficiaries would be Americans of all races and ethnicities in the economic underclass. The many specific line items truly justify the authors’ claim to “prioritize American workers, help grow our middle class, raise wages, and enhance economic opportunity for all lawful residents.” Adoption of the budget proposals would create conditions that should result in bringing back into the job market millions of Americans who have abandoned it, or been abandoned by it. And they would remove barriers to the aspirations of American students in many careers. Most of the provisions are not speculative in that they either have been proven effective in the past or have been recommended by a succession of federal commissions over the last half-century. They would greatly reduce the illegal foreign worker competition by eliminating the major incentives for foreign citizens to enter the country illegally or to overstay their visas. And the budget provisions, if implemented by a President, would end the chaos at our borders. If adopted in full, the immigration budget items would be one of the greatest steps ever taken by Congress for a more equitable and harmonious society.

The RSC Budget and Spending Task Force is chaired by Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), other task force members include:

• Byron Donalds (R-Fla.)
• Ralph Norman (R-S.C.)
• Trent Kelly (R-Miss.)
• Ronny Jackson (R-Texas)
• Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas)
• Bob Good (R-Va.)
• Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.)
• Ben Cline (R-Va.)
• Ron Estes (R-Kan.)
• Roger Williams (R-Texas)
• Fred Keller (R-Pa.)
• Troy Nehls (R-Texas)
• Michael Cloud (R-Texas)
• August Pfluger (R-Texas)

“As conservatives, we believe our country should be open to those that will seek the American dream, and not those that will seek to depend on the American taxpayer. We also believe it is morally reprehensible for liberal elites in the Biden Administration to use the hard-earned dollars of the American people to enact an open borders agenda,” the RSC budget explained.

You can read the full article at Breitbart News.

You can read the full RSC Budget Proposal here.