Trump support vital for Dreamers legislation

WASHINGTON » The Senate will open up a rare, open-ended debate on immigration and the fate of the “Dreamer” immigrants on Monday. But the most influential voice in the conversation may be on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue.

If the aim is to pass a legislative solution soon, President Donald Trump is a crucial and, at times, complicating player. His day-today turnabouts on the issues have confounded Democrats and Republicans and led some to urge the White House to minimize his role in the debate for fear he’ll say something that undermines the effort.

Yet his ultimate support will be vital if Congress is to overcome election-year pressures against compromise. No Senate deal is likely to see the light of day in the more conservative House without the president’s blessing and

promise to sell compromise to his hard-line base.

Trump, thus far, has balked on that front.

“The Tuesday Trump versus the Thursday Trump, after the base gets to him,” is how Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a proponent of compromise, describes the president and the impact conservative voters and his hard-right advisers have on him. “I don’t

know how far he’ll go, but I do think he’d like to fix it.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., scheduled an initial procedural vote for Monday evening to commence debate. It is expected to succeed easily, and then the Senate will spend days or weeks — no one knows how long — sorting through proposals.

Democrats and some Republicans

say they want to help the “Dreamers,” young immigrants who have lived in the U.S. illegally since they were children and have only temporarily been protected from deportation by an Obama-era program. Trump has said he wants to aid them and has even proposed a path to citizenship for 1.8 million, but in exchange wants $25 billion

for his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall plus significant curbs to legal immigration.

McConnell agreed to the open-ended debate, a Senate rarity in recent years, after Democrats forced a government shutdown last month and would supply enough votes to reopen agencies with a promise of a debate and votes on immigration. They’d initially demanded a

deal toward helping Dreamers, not a simple promise of votes.

What’s certain is that to prevail, any plan will need 60 votes, meaning substantial support from both parties is mandatory. Republicans control the chamber 51-49 but GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona has been home for weeks battling brain cancer.