Flake says Senate will vote on DACA bill next month
WASHINGTON — Thefateof hundreds of thousands of young immigrants living in the United States illegally and facing deportation will be decided next year, a Republican senator says.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-ariz., said Wednesday he received assurances from Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., that the Senate will vote in January on bipartisan legislation. The promise came in talks with the GOP leader on Flake’s backing for the tax bill.
“While I would have written a much different bill, this bill lowers the corporate tax rate in a manner that makes us globally competitive,” Flake said in a statement. He said Mcconnell has made a commitment for a vote on the measure now being negotiated.
The White House and lawmakers are working out details of the bill, but Flake said in an interview with The Associated Press that the legislation will broadly address border security, asylum policy and a fix for certain young immigrants.
At issue is President Donald Trump’s decision to rescind an Obama-era executive order that created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gave protected status to about 800,000 of those immigrants who are in the United States illegally.
In scrapping the order, Trump gave Congress until March to come up with a legislative solution.