US Senate rejects immigration proposals
Deal for building Mexican border wall also collapses
The US Senate blocked several immigration proposals on Thursday, including a bipartisan compromise opposed by President Donald Trump, dashing hopes that Congress will soon decide the fate of nearly two million migrants brought to the country illegally as children.
Mr Trump had threatened to veto the bipartisan deal, which would shield the young immigrants from deportation in exchange for $ 25 billion in border security, because it did not include the restrictions on legal immigration he has sought.
The Senate’s Republican leadership had set aside this week to reach an agreement on putting 1.8 million so- called “Dreamers” on a pathway to citizenship, boosting border security, and potentially tightening up existing regulations on immigration. Their efforts failed spectacularly, leaving the entire process up in the air.
Legislators were heading home to their districts for 10 days to reassess, with just weeks to go before a March 5 deadline, after which thousands could be at risk of deportation.
US courts may have a say in whether Dreamers get deported from that date.
Washington, Feb. 16: The US Senate on Friday rejected a slew of immigration reform proposals, including one backed by President Donald Trump, leaving hundreds of thousands of young migrants who were brought to the country illegally as children in limbo.
The Senate also shot down a bipartisan deal on immigration offered by the Trump administration which had offered to provide citizeship to some 1.8 million American’s so- called “Dreamers” in exchange of $ 25 billion for construction of a wall along the Mexican border and other security measures.
Senators, in a series of votes, failed to muster enough votes for either of the immigration plan to move ahead. In fact, the Bill backed by Trump lost 39- 60 votes. If passed, the Bill would have paved the way for permanent legal status to 1.8 million young legal immigrants and provided $ 25 billion towards building a wall along the Mexico border.
The White House supported Bill would have also curbed family- based immigration and ended diversity lottery visa. However, the Bill fell far short of 60 votes mark required to clear a filibuster.
The Senate also rejected another bipartisan Bill 54- 45, which was again short of the 60 votes required to clear filibuster.
Mr Trump described the Schumer- RoundsCollins immigration bill a “total catastrophe”. The White House threatened to veto the bill.
All four proposals put forward on Friday failed.
“Every amendment before the Senate today failed to pass because, as I have said since our effort in 2013, the more an immigration proposal tries to do at once, the less likely it is to succeed,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said.
Mr Rubio said he intends to keep working with other Senators on a more limited proposal that would permanently codify DACA’s renewable permits and provide meaningful border security and enforcement measures in the event a House- passed Bill cannot pass the Senate.
The fate of the Dreamers has been uncertain since Mr Trump scrapped the Obama- era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ( DACA) programme last September and gave the Congress six months to legislate a solution.