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If the goal was to entice undeserving applicants, you couldn’t design a worse combination of policy and resources. In comparison, the bipartisan proposal is designed to deny more cases at the initial stage and get final decisions on all cases in a matter of months.
For immigration hardliners, the moment of leverage had finally arrived: More enforcement without amnesty. However, instead of seizing this likely once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, House Republicans and former President Trump argued that the bill was not the hardliner wish list they preferred and successfully convinced most Senate Republicans to block the bill.
This one-sided deal that favors Republican enforcement policy is unlikely to ever reappear. There has never been another moment this century when Democrats agreed to enforcement legislation without meaningful legalization provisions. Nor have they ever agreed to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to anywhere near the level needed to locate and deport millions of individuals already in the country illegally.
Disclaimers; I’m not American, and would be considered pretty left-leaning by their standards… but:
A nation should get to decide who can enter and stay (either by visa, or by agreement - eg. Schengen); this entire ‘illegal immigration’ issue has been intentionally perpetrated by both sides for political gain, at the cost of the lives and well-beings of those affected.
Razor-wire fences, and sanctuary cities are both terrible policies, that show the total callousness of the American political system.
Ultimately, with strict border policy enforcement - those that currently profit the most from undocumented labour will be the ones to suffer, and would likely push for increased/streamlined legal migration of desired labour, with the added benefit of increased wages for local residents.
Australia experienced something similar in our agricultural sector during the COVID lockdowns, where the limited labour-force became a highly sought after commodity, given that the dodgier farms were no longer able to exploit backpackers for slave wages. Companies that had previously been paying award wages (basically minimum wage - equivalent to ~$15 USD/hr) or lower, not had to offer up to 50% more during peak harvest seasons in order to not have their fields go to rot.
At the end of the day, hard-working labour made significantly more money - at a relatively low cost to the end-user.