Immigration reform showdown starts in Senate this week
Along-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 Dreamers — as a majority of Americans want for those young immigrants brought to the US. illegally as children — while also enacting changes in border security eagerly sought by President Donald Trump.
“We’re going to have something in the Senate that we haven’t had in a while,” Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., 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 what they’re planning.
“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 helter-skelter 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, R-Wis., 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 four-part 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 family-based legal migration and ending the diversity lottery program. He made no mention of his support for protecting 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, facing pressure from senators in both parties, he said he would permit up-ordown votes on immigration proposals in exchange for ending the first shutdown, last month, which lasted three days.
“I’m not trying to tilt the playing field in any particular direction,” he said last week when asked about the debate.
Unlike most congressional debates, which begin with a prepared piece of legislation, the give and take over immigration will not. Instead, McConnell used his powers as floor leader late last week to bring up an unrelated bill that he said will be used as the “shell” for the debate. The shell can be reshaped when a proposed amendment has the 60 votes needed to clear procedural challenges and pass. Once amendments are added, the final bill will also require at least 60 votes to survive and pass.
“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 Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement. “It’s a hard needle to thread, but we are making progress.”
Flake said in a separate interview last week that immigration “is something that Mitch has been loathe to address, we know that.” The forthcoming debate “may not yield anything, that’s dangerous in itself, but we just don’t know what coalitions will develop and what amendments will gain steam.”