Flake: Senate will vote on ‘dreamers’ in January
“This was a hard-fought commitment to get.” Sen. Jeff Flake R-Ariz.
The Senate will vote on a bipartisan bill in January to address the legal status of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children who will soon lose deportation protections, U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake said.
Flake, R-Ariz., said he received a promise from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that a vote will take place sometime next month, before Congress reaches a firm deadline to vote on a spending bill to avert a government shutdown.
“This was a hard-fought commitment to get,” Flake said.
A bipartisan group of senators already has begun hammering out details of a bill with input from the White House, Flake said in a conference call with reporters.
The scope of the bill is still being negotiated, but it will likely allow about 800,000 young undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers” who received temporary deportation protections in the past to legalize their status in the future, putting them on the path to eventually become full citizens.
The bill will also likely include many of the additional 2 million dreamers who were eligible for the deportationprotection program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, but didn’t apply, Flake said.
Flake was among a bipartisan group of senators who met with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on Tuesday to begin laying the groundwork for a bipartisan bill to address the legal status of dreamers.
Flake said the White House plans to provide a “punch list” of border-security and immigration measures that President Donald Trump wants to see included in the dreamer bill, among them funding for additional fencing and other technology along the southern border.
But in order to receive the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate, Flake acknowledged Republicans will need to compromise with Democrats who are unlikely to vote for a dreamer bill that includes some of the more onerous measures on Trump’s list.
Flake said he also has spoken with
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and is optimistic the House will also vote on a dreamer bill.
Dreamers were thrown into limbo in September, when Trump announced that he was ending a program created through executive action by President Barack Obama that offered temporary deportation protection to undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
Trump gave Congress until March 5 to come up with a permanent solution.
But more than 100 dreamers a day are already losing their deportation protections because they were given only a month to reapply, said Karina Ruiz, president of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition.
The longer Congress waits, the greater they are at risk of being deported, Ruiz said.
Adding to the urgency, she said, even if Congress passes a dreamer bill in January, it could take months for the government to implement a legalization program and months more for applications to be processed.
Meanwhile, the number of people losing deportation protections will grow to about 1,000 daily once the program ends in March, according to some estimates.
“Our families right now are being separated every day and we can no longer live with that uncertainty,” said Ruiz, 33, a dreamer whose deportation protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program ends in January 2019.
On Wednesday, United We Dream, a network of organizations that advocate for dreamers, posted video and photos of hundreds of dreamers wearing orange hats and blocking pedestrian tunnels that members of Congress and staffers use to walk underground between buildings.
They were demanding that lawmakers who support dreamer legislation withhold their votes for a spending bill needed to avert a government shut down by a Friday deadline unless it includes the Dream Act.
The Dream Act is the most lenient of several pending bills. It would give more than 2 million dreamers the opportunity to legalize their status, not just those currently covered under DACA, without including border-security and immigration measures sought by Trump and some conservative Republicans.
Throughout the week, dreamers also have occupied the offices of several key members of Congress, including Flake’s, demanding they withhold their votes on a spending bill unless it includes the Dream Act.
Last Friday, seven dreamers went on a hunger strike after they were arrested and jailed for refusing to leave the Washington offices of U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; and U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., unless the lawmakers followed through with promises to withhold votes for the spending bill.
The seven arrested included two dreamers from Arizona: Erika Andiola, a former staffer for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, and Belen Sisa, an Arizona State University student. Sisa was released from jail on Tuesday, but Andiola has continued her hunger strike in jail, supporters said.
It now appears likely, however, that lawmakers will vote to pass a second stop-gap measure before Friday’s deadline, temporarily extending funding through mid-January without addressing the dreamer issue.
On Dec. 7, Congress passed the first shortterm deal extending funding through midnight Friday without including a vote on a dreamer bill.
Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, an immigrant-advocacy group, said assurances that the Senate will vote on a dreamer bill in January won’t please dreamers.
“People are really disappointed and angry that it didn’t happen before the holidays, justifiably given the crisis that the end of DACA has created for hundreds of thousands” of dreamers, Sharry said.
But he said he believes there is now a greater chance Congress will pass a bill since this time Republicans will be facing a hard deadline to finally pass a spending bill to avert a government shutdown, and will need votes from at least some Democrats to get it done, giving Democrats additional leverage.