“DREAMERS” DEBATE TO START
Lawmakers hope to find bipartisan compromise to thorny issue
A showdown on immigration reform is coming this week — and nobody knows how it will turn out.
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 “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 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 passes 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 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 he threw into uncertainty when he canceled an Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.