‘Dreamers’ left in limbo by Senate votes
"This vote is proof that President Trump's plan will never become law. If he would stop torpedoing bipartisan efforts, a good bill would pass.''
Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader
UNITED STATES: The US Senate left hundreds of thousands of ‘‘Dreamer’' immigrants in limbo yesterday, rejecting rival plans that would have spared them from deportation and strengthened the nation’s border security.
Senators dealt President Donald Trump an especially galling defeat, as more than a quarter of his fellow Republicans abandoned him on an issue that helped to propel him to the White House.
Also defeated was a plan by a bipartisan group of senators, who offered a compromise that would have shielded the young immigrants and financed Trump’s demands for money to build his coveted border wall with Mexico, though more gradually than he wants.
Eight Republicans joined most Democrats in backing that plan, but it fell short after the White House threatened a veto and GOP leaders opposed it.
The day’s votes, in which four separate proposals were defeated, illustrated anew Congress’s steep challenge in striking a deal on an issue that has proven intractable for years and on which each party’s most fervent supporters refuse to budge.
The outcome suggested there may be no permanent solution soon to help the Dreamers, despite their sky-high support in public polling.
The Senate votes left the young immigrants facing a March 5 deadline that Trump has given Congress for restoring the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, or DACA, which he annulled last year.
Federal courts have blocked him temporarily from dismantling the Obama-era initiative, but without congressional action the immigrants will face growing risks of deportation as their protections expire.
Dreamers are immigrants who were brought to the US as children and now risk deportation because they lack permanent authorisation to stay. DACA gives them the ability to live and work in the US for two-year periods that can be renewed.
‘‘It looks like demagogues on the left and the right win again on immigration,’' said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who helped to craft the bipartisan package but also backed Trump’s plan.
He added: ‘‘The only way forward is for President Trump to grab the reins and lead us to a solution.’'
That scenario wasn’t in sight yesterday. The White House trashed the bipartisan proposal as ‘‘dangerous policy that will harm the nation’', denouncing a provision directing the government to prioritise enforcement efforts against immigrants who arrive illegally – beginning in July.
Trump proved unwilling to give way on his demands for a tougher bill, reflecting the hardline immigration stance that fuelled his presidential run.
After the Senate rejected all four proposals yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blamed Democrats for failing to accept what he said was a ‘‘generous’' offer from Trump.
‘‘They turned away from a golden opportunity to solve the issue,’' said McConnell. He expressed openness to considering a future compromise but said ‘‘for that to happen, Democrats will need to take a second look’' at Trump’s demands.
Trump had dangled a chance for citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants, meeting a top Democratic demand. But that plan also included US$25 billion to build his border wall with Mexico and enact other border security measures, tighter curbs on relatives whom legal immigrants could sponsor for citizenship, and an end to a visa lottery that encourages immigration from diverse nations.
No 2 Senate GOP leader John Cornyn said after the votes that lawmakers might consider temporarily protecting Dreamers from deportation in a government-wide spending measure Congress will consider next month.
He said that approach ‘‘to me is not great, but that’s kind of where we are’'.
Democrats said Trump was the major hindrance to a broader deal.
‘‘This vote is proof that President Trump’s plan will never become law,’' said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. ‘‘If he would stop torpedoing bipartisan efforts, a good bill would pass.’'
The Senate derailed Trump’s proposal by voting 60-39 against it – 21 votes shy of the 60 it needed to survive.
Fourteen Republicans – more than one in four – joined 46 Democrats in opposition. The ‘‘no’' votes included some of the chamber’s most conservative Republicans, many of whom were uncomfortable with offering citizenship to immigrants in the US illegally.
Just three Democrats backed Trump’s proposal, all of them facing dicey November re-election in states he carried easily in 2016: Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin.
The vote on the bipartisan plan was 54-45, six short of the required
60. Eight Republicans who helped to craft that compromise supported it, and three Democrats voted ‘‘no’', including California Senator Kamala Harris, who is viewed as a 2020 presidential hopeful.
That proposal offered the citizenship pathway for Dreamers and
$25b for border security, but doled it out over 10 years.
Trump’s bill would have prevented legal immigrants from sponsoring parents and siblings for citizenship, and would have ended a visa lottery aimed at allowing more diverse immigrants into the US. The compromise bill would have left the lottery system intact but barred Dreamers who obtain citizenship from sponsoring their parents.
The bipartisan measure’s sponsors included eight GOP senators. It was produced by a group led by Republican Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, and Democrat Manchin.
Also rejected was a modest plan by Senators John McCain and Chris Coons.
It would have let many Dreamers qualify for permanent residency, and directed federal agencies to more effectively control the border by 2020. But it didn’t offer a special citizenship pathway, raise border security funds or make sweeping changes to legal immigration rules.
A proposal by Republican Senator Pat Toomey that would have blocked federal grants to ‘‘sanctuary cities’', communities that don’t co-operate with federal efforts to enforce immigration laws, was killed.
Ahead of the votes, the White House mobilised a full-fledged effort to scuttle the bipartisan immigration plan
Administration officials said they strenuously lobbied individual Republican senators, as well as House leadership, to oppose the bill.
The Department of Homeland Security also issued a lengthy ‘‘fact sheet’’ that said the plan ‘‘destroys the ability’’ of the agency to enforce immigration laws and represented an ‘‘egregious violation’’ of the immigration framework Trump sent to Capitol Hill.
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