WASHINGTON: The US Senate began a major, free-for-all immigration debate, its first in nearly five years, on Monday evening that could decide the fate of at least 700,000 ‘Dreamer’ immigrants, young people brought into the country illegally years ago as children.
Late on Monday, Senator John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican, put tight time constraints on the normally slow-moving Senate.
“It’s this week or not at all,” Cornyn said of the need for quick Senate action. Speaking to reporters, he warned that the debate had to be “wrapped up” by Thursday, before next week’s congressional recess.
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, Cornyn’s counterpart, told reporters he hoped a combination of the Senate’s 49 Democrats and independents, coupled with 11 Republicans, could get behind a bill, propelling it to passage.
But Cornyn said tepid support among Republicans was a recipe for failure: “If they think … they can cobble together a handful of Republicans to go along with a majority of Democrats and somehow get it past the House and get the president to sign it, I think that’s a pipe dream.”
Under an order issued last year by Republican President Donald Trump, the Dreamers could be deported after March 5. That deadline looms behind the rare Senate debate, in which no single bill was to be the centrepiece and a range of ideas was in play.
By forcing the deadline on Congress with his September order, Trump drove a sharp wedge between Democrats and Republicans on an emotionally charged issue. The rhetoric around the debate was running red-hot even before it got started.
“This week we will see the horrific vision of the White House and extremist Republicans on full display … their vision is nothing short of white supremacy,” Greisa Martinez Rosas, a Dreamer and activist told reporters on a teleconference.
On the other side, the group Advocates for Victims of Illegal Alien Crime said in a press release: “The reality is that American families are the ones suffering the most — their children killed — by illegal alien crime.” Bridging the sometimes ugly divide between factions in the immigration debate, one that Trump himself has widened with his inflammatory statements, will be a challenge for Congress.
Despite last week’s enactment of a bipartisan budget deal, partisanship still rules in Washington. It was unclear if any immigration bill could cross the Senate’s 60-vote hurdle, let alone pass the more conservative House of Representatives.
“I just don’t know if we will have 60 votes” for anything, Durbin said.
With the 2018 congressional re-election campaigns nearing, the rhetoric was bound to escalate around the Dreamers and the program that now shields them from deportation, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
Started in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama, DACA gave certain young immigrants temporary protections from deportation and the ability to get work permits. It has been a target for Trump, though he seems to be torn about the Dreamers’ future.
On Monday, Trump made little effort to ease tensions.
Mixed signals
Democrats, he told reporters at the White House, have been “talking about DACA for many years and they haven’t produced.” Trump’s September order that he would end DACA on March 5 was followed by a series of mixed signals on whether he would follow through. Under his present orders, an estimated 1,000 Dreamers a day will lose their protections beginning March 5.
Some Republicans argue that the deadline on that date has lost its force since a federal court blocked Trump from ending DACA, sending the matter before the Supreme Court.
The nine justices are due to meet on Friday to discuss how to handle the administration’s appeal. If the court decides to hear the case, an announcement could come as soon as Friday afternoon and a decision by late June.
The Senate’s two top leaders put on a show of camaraderie as their chamber launched its immigration debate, but also laid down markers underscoring how hard it will be to reach a deal that can move through Congress.
“We really do get along, despite what you read in the press,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N. Y., said Monday at a previously scheduled appearance alongside his counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., at the University of Louisville.
‘No Brooklyn bourbon’
There was even ribbing when Schumer presented McConnell with a bottle of bourbon made in his home New York City borough of Brooklyn. McConnell, whose state knows a thing or two about bourbon, proclaimed, “There’s no such thing as Brooklyn bourbon.”
But just days after the two leaders brokered a bipartisan $400 billion (Dh1.46 trillion) budget agreement and helped shepherd it into law, both men made clear that an immigration agreement will be tough.
“The time for political posturing is behind us,” McConnell said later Monday on the Senate floor. He said while Democrats have called for “swift action” on immigration, “Now’s the time to back up the talk with the hard work of finding a solution.”
That, he pointedly said, would mean passage by the Senate and the House of a measure “which the president will sign.”
McConnell expressed his support for a wide-ranging proposal by President Donald Trump that the Senate is expected to vote on this week. It would pave a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million young “Dreamer” immigrants in the US illegally, a lure for Democrats that many Republicans oppose.
Trump also wants $25 billion for Trump’s border wall with Mexico and other security measures, as well as curbs on legal immigration — a must for many Republicans. Many Democrats consider some of the proposals, including limiting the relatives that legal immigrants can bring to the US, to be non-starters.
In his own remarks on the Senate floor, Schumer expressed opposition to such a sweeping approach.
“The only enemy here is overreach,” Schumer said. “Now is not the time nor the place to reform the entire legal immigration system. Rather, this is the time for a narrow bill” — which Democrats have said would help the Dreamers and provide some money for border security.
