GOP offers $30B plan to open talks on ‘Dreamers’
$30B plan continues DACA in exchange for wall along the border
Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas and other top Republicans unveil a $30 billion immigration plan that they hold out as the starting point for negotiations to protect “Dreamers.”
WASHINGTON — As immigration activists fanned out across the U.S. Capitol, Texas U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul and other top Republicans unveiled legislation Wednesday that they held out as the starting point for negotiations to protect “Dreamers,” immigrants brought into the country illegally as children.
But the $30 billion GOP plan, coming a day after President Donald Trump called for a “bill of love,” hewed closely to Republican priorities that Democrats have rejected, including construction of border wall.
For so-called Dreamers, or beneficiaries of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, it would offer three-year renewable legal status allowing them to work, travel and study in the U.S. and abroad.
“I see a unique opportunity with DACA to finally get the border secure once and for all,” said McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security. For McCaul, once a skeptic about the usefulness of a border wall, the bill represents a doubling-down on a $15 billion border security bill he introduced last year. Government funding bill
The new bill was introduced with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and other GOP leaders as top Democrats and Republicans scrambled to come to terms on a broader 2018 funding bill before government funding dries up Jan. 20.
Though Republicans have the votes to pass the legislation in the House, they would need the votes of at least nine Senate Democrats to overcome a filibuster in the upper chamber.
Despite an extraordinary on-camera negotiating session Tuesday at the White House, Democrats and Hispanic activists appeared unwilling Wednesday to back away from their demand for a “clean” legislative fix to the DACA program, which Trump is terminating in March.
As Republicans outlined their bill, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland appeared outside the Capitol with dozens of Dreamers, calling for no-stringsattached legislation granting them a pathway to citizenship.
“They are just people who don’t have any papers, in every other sense they are Americans,” Hoyer said. “They put their hands on their hearts and pledge allegiance to the United States of America.”
The GOP bill would provide Dreamers no special pathways to legal status or citizenship other than those available to other immigrants.
The bill also includes a long wish list of GOP priorities on immigration enforcement, including construction of a border wall and other border security measures. It would crack down on so-called “sanctuary cities” – communities that Republicans say fail to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
It also would add another 5,000 Border Patrol agents and 5,000 customs officers, as well as authorize the National Guard to provide aviation and intelligence support to border security operations. Reducing legal immigration
Though not billed as a comprehensive immigration reform effort, the GOP bill also would curtail legal immigration. It would eliminate the controversial visa lottery for green cards and limit a sponsorship program for extended family members, which Republicans call “chain migration.”
The bill’s overall goal, sponsors said, is to reduce legal immigration levels by about 260,000 a year, or roughly 25 percent of the current annual average of a more than one million. The new system also would emphasize skilled workers and an agricultural guest worker program.
Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, the top Republican in Tuesday’s freewheeling encounter with Trump, called the House bill “a good place to start,” saying it will prompt discussions on DACA and other immigration issues in the House and Senate.
“That is a lot of work in a short period of time,” Cornyn said.
Also Wednesday, the president denounced the federal courts as “broken and unfair” after a U.S. 9th District judge in San Francisco issued a temporary ruling keeping the DACA program in place, despite Trump’s decision to end it this year.
The administration vowed to request a stay and appeal.