On Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said that a comprehensive amnesty bill would have helped America contain the Ebola epidemic in Africa.
Durbin, a member of the Senate’s Gang of Eight that wrote the immigration reform bill, said during a Senate hearing on Ebola that the Senate’s amnesty bill would have even allowed doctors in the United States to travel to Africa to combat Ebola “without jeopardizing their immigration status.”
“We included in the immigration reform bill, which passed the United States Senate, a provision which provided, in one respect, if you are medically trained in Africa and promise to serve in Africa for a period of time before going anywhere else, we would honor that and respect that and not allow people to be recruited into the United States if they still had an obligation to their country,” Durbin said, according to the Washington Times. “And secondly, that doctors in the United States would be able to serve in these crisis situations overseas without jeopardizing their immigration status.”
Durbin reportedly lamented that the amnesty bill “was never called for consideration in the House of Representatives.”