Showdown looms on immigration reform
Some push to aid ‘Dreamers,’ others push border security
Better border security, or help for “Dreamers’? A longanticipated showdown on immigration reform is coming this week — and nobody knows how it will turn out. The Senate is set to begin debate tonight on the issue, as the divided chamber seeks a way to strike a bipartisan compromise.
WASHINGTON — A long-anticipated showdown on immigration reform is coming this week — and nobody knows how it will turn out.
The Senate is set to begin debate Monday night on an issue that has vexed lawmakers for years, likely signaling whether the closely divided chamber has any hope of striking a bipartisan compromise.
Among other challenges is whether Congress can find a way to protect the so-called Dreamers — as a majority of Americans want for those young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children — while also enacting changes in border security and immigration, priorities for President Donald Trump.
“We’re going to have something in the Senate that we haven’t had in a while,” Sen. Jeff Flake, RAriz., said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It’s a real debate on an issue where we really don’t know what the outcome is going to be.”
And few are saying much publicly about their plans.
“There’s not a lot of deep planning that’s gone on,” said Frank Sharry, founder and executive director of America’s Voice, an immigration advocacy organization. “Everyone was focused on what was going on with the shutdown. I think it is going to have a helterskelter quality to it.”
Even if the Senate is able to pass a bill, it’s far from certain that the House will move ahead with it.
Speaker Paul Ryan, RWis., said last week that the House “will bring a solution to the floor, one the president will sign.”
What exactly Trump will support remains crucial yet unknown, as he has shown little willingness to accept anything short of the fourpart plan he proposed last month.
In a weekend tweet, he reiterated support for “creating a safe, modern and lawful immigration system” that includes more border security, ending familybased legal migration and ending the diversity lottery program. He made no mention of his support for protecting a total of 1.8 million Dreamers, whose status was thrown into uncertainty when he canceled an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
“It’s time for Congress to act and to protect Americans,” Trump said in a video message released late Saturday. “Every member of Congress should choose the side of law enforcement and the side of the American people. That’s the way it has to be.”
Trump sparked the debate in September by announcing the end of DACA, which grants temporary legal status to roughly 690,000 Dreamers. He has given lawmakers until March 5 to enact a permanent solution.
But Congress has failed for years to secure the votes to pass a Dream Act, as the legislation has become known.
Supporters of such legislation had hoped to tie it to the debate over spending, which has prompted two short-lived government shutdowns in recent weeks. Although that didn’t happen, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., did agree to set the immigration debate in motion last month when he said he would permit up-ordown votes on immigration proposals in exchange for ending the first shutdown, which lasted three days.
“Every ounce of energy this week is going to be spent on crafting a bill that protects dreamers and can get sixty votes,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement.
Liberal organizations and immigration-reform advocates are warily watching the debate, pushing for a narrow fix to protect Dreamers and warning that they will hold Democrats and vulnerable Republicans accountable if they cannot keep Trump’s proposed policy changes to a minimum.
Democrats are expected to introduce a new version of the Dream Act, a bill first introduced during George W. Bush’s presidency that would provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is the longtime lead sponsor of the Dream Act. If he doesn’t introduce it, Democratic senators Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey or Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — all of whom are mulling 2020 presidential bids — might assume the mantle.
One wild card is Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., an architect of the comprehensive immigration deal that passed the Senate in 2013 but died in the House. Rubio has taken more of a back seat in the talks this time around.
The immigration debate “is like a Rubik’s Cube,” Rubio said. “I mean, every time you line up the red side of the Rubik’s Cube, the blue side is off-balance, and vice versa.”