Four immigration plans fall flat in Senate votes
Trump-favored measure, bipartisan bill bomb
WASHINGTON – The Senate on Thursday killed four immigration bills, including a Republican measure backed by President Trump and a competing bipartisan proposal, both of which would have offered legal protections to more than 1 million undocumented immigrants who came to the USA as children.
The Senate’s failure puts those immigrants, known as DREAMers, at risk of deportation starting March 5, when the White House plans to rescind legal protections granted under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The House is also deeply divided on the issue of immigration, and GOP leaders in that chamber have not scheduled a vote on any legislation. The White House said it cannot extend the program that granted the DREAMers temporary legal status and work permits, leaving no clear path for a resolution to their status. Federal judges ordered the administration to renew protections for people in the program, a dispute that will be resolved by the Supreme Court.
Senators said they would try to regroup and come up with a better compromise that could win the 60 votes needed to advance. “The issue is not going to go away,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., a lead sponsor of the bipartisan bill. “We’ve still got DACA kids that are going to have to be addressed. We’ve still got a border security system that the president says is a priority.”
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., another supporter of the bipartisan bill, said he would keep working. “This crisis isn’t going away, and I will not rest until these young people and their families have the future in America that they deserve,” Durbin said.
Trump weighed in via Twitter before the vote, saying the bipartisan plan would be a “total catastrophe.”
The bill, unveiled Wednesday night by a group of 16 senators, would have provided a pathway to citizenship for more than 2 million DREAMers. It would have allocated $25 billion to strengthen security at the southern border with Mexico, limited family-based immigration and barred the parents of DREAMers from becoming citizens.
“This is the only bill that has a chance to get through the United States Senate,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, a lead sponsor, said before Thursday’s vote.
Unlike the GOP-controlled House, which can pass bills with the support of the majority party, most major legislation requires 60 votes in the Senate. Republicans hold only 51 seats in the Senate, so any of the four bills would have needed bipartisan support.
The White House threatened a veto of the bipartisan bill.
The Department of Homeland Security said the bill “would be the end of immigration enforcement in America.”
Supporters of the measure disputed the White House’s arguments and said the bill met Trump’s demands in a fair and balanced way.
“Democrats made enormous concessions in order to reach not one but six separate, bipartisan agreements to pass the overwhelmingly popular Dream Act in exchange for a dismally unpopular border wall,” Durbin said. “The president and his enablers in Congress rejected them all, never once budging from their own partisan plan.”
The final Senate vote on the bipartisan measure was 54-45, well short of the 60 needed to advance.
Trump backed a more restrictive Senate bill, which was also defeated Thursday.
That proposal, sponsored by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, would have granted eventual citizenship to 1.8 million of the DREAMers and given Trump his requested $25 billion for immigration enforcement, including funding for the wall.
It would have met Trump’s demands for changes to family-based immigration, what Republicans call “chain migration,” and ended a diversity visa lottery system. The bill would have cut legal immigration by at least 25%.
The Trump-backed bill garnered 39 “yes” votes, and 60 senators voted against it.
The Senate rejected two narrower bills: one to create a path to citizenship for the DREAMers and improve border security and a second to withhold funding from “sanctuary cities” that limit police officers’ cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
“This crisis isn’t going away, and I will not rest until these young people and their families have the future in America that they deserve.” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.