Almost all House Democrats voted against allowing unvaccinated people to enter the US, despite their push for open borders the rest of the time.
HR 185, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, was designed to nullify the CDC order that implemented the ban on unvaccinated people entering the country. The ban was first put in place in October 2021, and in January, the Biden administration extended the entry requirements until at least April, making the US one of the last countries to have such a ban.
Any subsequent orders from the Biden administration to re-implement any mandate against forbidding unvaccinated travellers from entering the country, and also stops the use of federal funds to either administer or enforce any requirement.
In the end, the House passed the bill by 227 votes to 201. While the bill was mostly along party lines, seven Democrats voted in favour of the legislation, including all three Democrat Representatives from Nevada.
Despite almost all Democrats voting against permitting the unvaccinated to enter the country legally, many of them support open borders for illegal immigrants, in what appears to be an extremely inconsistent policy decision.
Over 60 of those that voted against HR 185, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Joaquin Castro, Adam Schiff, and Ruben Gallego, demanded in a letter last month that migrants be allowed to enter over the southern border in order to seek asylum. There was no mention of rejecting unvaccinated migrants in the letter.
In December, Border Patrol reported a record 16,000 encounters with illegal immigrants coming over the border in 48 hours, with El Paso in Texas seeing the single biggest group crossing ever. Among the thousands of migrants, Border Patrol seized $97 million worth of narcotics, and arrested murderers, rapists, and gang members.
In August of last year, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denied that illegal immigrants could cross the southern border without having taken the vaccine, in an attempt to defend the Biden administration’s policy on barring the unvaccinated from the country at normal ports of entry.
“That’s not how it works,” she said, while responding to Fox News’ Peter Doocy. “It’s not like somebody walks over and, that’s not…” she continued, before breaking out into awkward laughter.
Last week, the House passed a resolution introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar, co-sponsored by Massie and fellow Represenatives Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, among others, to end the COVID-19 national emergency declaration, noting that Biden had declared in September that the pandemic was “over.”
“There is no ongoing COVID-19 emergency to justify the continuation of the national emergency declaration,” Gosar said in January. “Cases are down and most Americans have returned to a pre-pandemic normalcy. This hardly sounds like a country under a national emergency.”
This news and commentary by Jack Hadfield originally appeared on Valiant News.
