Conservative lawmakers and commentators are linking the Boston Marathon bombings-commited by immigrant brothers from central Asia -as another reason to pull the breaks on immigration reform.
"Given the events of this week, it's important for us to understand the gaps and loopholes in our immigration system," Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in an immigration hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The two suspects in the Marathon bombing are Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was shot by police officials during a shootout Thursday night, and Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, who is still at large. They are from Dagestan, which neighbors Chechnya in southern Russia. They lived near Boston, and had been in the U.S. for about a decade after receiving asylum. One of them became a U.S. citizen last year, according to CNN, although it was not clear which brother.
Grassley, the top Republican on the committee, is starting to review the comprehensive immigration reform bill drafted by a bipartisan team of eight senators. In his opening statement, Grassley also argued the Boston terror case can help strengthen immigration reform since "it will help shed light on the weaknesses in our system ... [and] how can we beef up security checks on people who would enter the United States."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and the committee chair, rejected that notion. "If we change the policies in this country every time something happens-whether it's Oklahoma City, 9/11, this-then we're never going to do anything," he told reporters after the hearing. "We should think about where the best policies are for the United States and use those."
Grassley was also countered by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who asked that "all of us not jump to conclusions regarding the events in Boston or try to conflate those events with this legislation." Schumer added that programs for political refugees have been "significantly strengthened in the past five years, such that we are much more careful about screening people and determining who should and should not be coming into the country."
