Hurd seeks vote on DACA
Texas Republican files paperwork aimed at shielding young immigrants
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Will Hurd and a handful of GOP moderates filed paperwork Wednesday aimed at forcing votes on proposals to protect hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who landed in legal limbo after the cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Their so-called discharge petition is a means to bypass House Speaker Paul Ryan’s opposition thus far to voting this election year on divisive matters related to immigration.
If successful,the San Antonio Republican and the others will initiate a full-bore immigration debate next month, forcing Congress to come to grips not just with DACA but with proposals pushed by the Trump administration to impose curbs on legal immigration.
President Donald Trump ordered the DACA program, which began in 2012, rescinded effective March 5. Key provisions of the program are being kept alive by federal courts, enabling recipients to renew work permits and avoid grounds for deportation. DACA protects some
700,000 young immigrants who were brought illegally to the U.S. as children.
Hurd, who is sponsoring one of the bills that would get a vote, expressed optimism in the tactic even though discharge petitions rarely succeed.
“Nobody, when we first started this, thought we could get 50 co-sponsors on our bill, half Republicans and half Democrats. Everybody has been counting us out, but we’ve been able to evolve,” he said in an interview. ‘Doing our jobs’
Under House rules, their petition could not be taken up until June 25. Until then, the moderates will be rounding up the 218 signatures they need, Hurd said.
Hurd was joined in the parliamentary maneuver by other moderate Republicans, several of whom, like him, face potentially tough re-election battles this fall.
Speaking later at a news conference outside the Capitol, Hurd said the petition affords an opportunity to have a debate on the floor of Congress “no matter what your ideological views are … let’s do this before the end of summer.”
By late afternoon Wednesday, Republicans had secured 17 signatures on the petition from their ranks. Republicans who appeared alongside Hurd said their petition was not an effort to undermine Ryan.
“This has been a member driven movement, just as the Speaker asked for when he was first elected. This is hundreds of conversations on both sides of the aisle to have a discussion and a debate,” said Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif.
“This is about doing our jobs,” said Republican Rep. Mia Love of Utah. “This is about making sure that we are not consolidating power in the White House. If we are not allowed to bring a bill to the floor, to debate bills on the floor, then the people who voted for me will not have a vote on the House floor.”
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, RFla., said that this was the first time in 28 years in Congress that she had signed a discharge petition when her party controlled the House.
“That tells you what a sense of urgency, what a sense of priority, this Dreamer’s legislation has for all of us,” she said.
Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong did not respond directly to questions about the parliamentary tactic but said in a statement, “We continue to work with our members to find a solution that can both pass the House and get the president’s signature.”
Last month, Hurd and his GOP allies, joined by Democrats, pressed Ryan and GOP leaders to embrace the rarely used “Queen of the Hill” rule, which would enable votes on four competing measures that would in some fashion restore provisions of DACA. They refused.
The petition would force votes on the four pieces of legislation, among them a combined DACA fix and border security proposal authored by Hurd that has gained more than two-dozen GOP sponsors and would be expected to win all Democratic votes. Hurd said that he and his chief co-sponsor, California Democrat Pete Aguilar, are open to making changes in coming weeks to draw more Republicans.
Another bill that would get a vote is the Dream Act, short for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, that would set in motion a multistage process giving young immigrants conditional status and ultimately permanent residence.
A third proposal, co-sponsored by Austin Republican Michael McCaul, is the most conservative and would grant legal status for young immigrants only for three years at a time.
Ryan would choose the fourth piece of legislation, the farreaching plan by the White House to offer protections for 1.8 million DACA-aged immigrants in return for as much as $25 billion in border wall funding and an overhaul of popular methods of legal immigration. The Senate soundly rejected the administration’s plan in February.
The proposal getting the most votes would move to the Senate provided that it had at least 218 supporters, a majority. Conservative pushback
The maneuvering by Hurd and the others will test Republican Party discipline with GOP House leadership set to change now that Ryan has announced he is leaving Congress after this term.
Conservatives began their push to reject the plan. On Wednesday, former Sen. Jim DeMint, who heads the Conservative Partnership Institute advocacy group, tweeted: “Thought amnesty was dead? Some GOP using “queen of the hill” strategy to quietly ram amnesty through. Are they trying to lose the House?”
Asked to respond, Hurd said: “This is about bringing a permanent solution for 1 million-plus young immigrants who have only known the United States as their home and who already are contributing to our economy and our history and our culture.”
He added: “And this is also about, once and for all, finally having a smart way to secure our border.”