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Senate Rejects Trump’s Immigration Plan Senate Rejects Immigration Plans, Leaving Fate of Dreamers Uncertain
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — In a stern rebuke to President Trump, the Senate on Thursday decisively rejected a White House rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws that would have bolstered border security, placed strict new limits on legal migration and resolved the fate of the so-called Dreamers. WASHINGTON — The Senate summarily blocked three measures on Thursday — including one backed by President Trump — to resolve the fate of the so-called Dreamers, leaving hundreds of thousands of them facing an uncertain future.
The measure by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, was patterned after one that the White House proposed, but the 39-60 vote was 21 votes short of the 60 votes required for the Senate to consider it. Mr. Trump had threatened to veto any other approach. As senators struck down measure after measure, a week that began with the promise of a rare open, free-ranging debate on the issue crashed headlong into the same divisions that have prevented Congress from fixing the nation’s immigration system for decades, leaving in doubt whether any solution on the Dreamers can be reached.
But the rejection of the president’s plan was bipartisan: Democrats refused its get-tough approach to legal immigration, while many conservative Republicans opposed its pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. In a rebuke to the president, senators voted overwhelmingly, 39 to 60, against the White House-backed bill, which would have committed $25 billion for a wall along the border with Mexico, placed strict limits on legal immigration, ended the diversity visa lottery and offered 1.8 million Dreamers an eventual path to citizenship.
What happens now in the Senate immigration debate is unclear. Before the vote on the White House plan, senators turned away two more modest measures to protect young immigrants known as Dreamers. Neither the plan drafted by a broad group of centrists nor one written by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, secured 60 votes. Senators were 21 votes short of the 60 required to open debate, and the rejection of the president’s plan was bipartisan: Democrats refused its get-tough approach to legal immigration, while many conservative Republicans derided it as amnesty.
The McCain-Coons measure received 52 votes. The centrist measure won 54. Before the vote on Mr. Trump’s plan, senators rejected two bipartisan measures, including one written by Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, and another drafted by a broad bipartisan group of centrists calling themselves the Common Sense Coalition.
The White House-backed measure would have severely limited “chain migration,” more commonly known as family-based immigration, and would have ended the diversity visa lottery program, two priorities of the president that are anathema to Democrats. The votes were a stark reminder that Congress remains paralyzed by the immigration issue. Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush both tried to overhaul the system, but were stymied by lawmakers frozen into inaction, in part because of powerful interests on both sides.
It would also have provided $25 billion for the border wall the president has proposed building at the southern border, as well as a path to citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants who were brought to this country as children. What will happen now is unclear. An estimated 690,000 young undocumented immigrants have been protected from deportation by an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Another 1.1 million would be eligible.
An estimated 690,000 of these young immigrants, known as Dreamers, are protected from deportation by an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and about 1.1 million more are eligible. But Mr. Trump has rescinded the initiative, which is set to expire March 5. But Mr. Trump has rescinded the program, which offers temporary, renewable work permits. It expires March 5.
Mr. Trump had said the White House-backed measure was the only one he would sign. Mr. Grassley grew emotional with reporters on Wednesday as he appealed to Democrats to support it. The White House had worked vigorously to oppose the centrist bill, which the Department of Homeland Security labeled “a mass amnesty for over 10 million illegal aliens.” Senators of both parties said afterward that the Trump administration was instrumental in its defeat.
“Here’s an opportunity to do something,” Mr. Grassley told reporters on Wednesday. “We shouldn’t miss this opportunity. We’ve got something that ought to get bipartisan support in the Senate. It’s got the best chance of getting through the House of Representatives and it’s the only one that you hear talked about that the president will sign.” “I don’t think the president helped very much, but the bottom line is the demagogues won again on the left and the right,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a key sponsor of the Senate measure.
The White House had worked vigorously to bring down every other approach. In a conference call with reporters just before voting began, a senior White House official lashed out at Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, a key sponsor of an alternative measure. Speaking only on condition of anonymity despite repeated requests to be on the record, the official accused Mr. Graham of attacking Homeland Security officials and standing in the way of needed immigration changes. Some Dreamers, many of whom have known no country other than the United States, are hopeful that the judicial system will protect them. Two federal courts have issued injunctions ordering the Trump administration to keep DACA in place for those already receiving its protections, but the Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to intervene and overturn lower court rulings.
“Senator Graham has been an obstacle for those reforms,” the official said. He accused Mr. Graham of misleading other senators, including Democrats, about the damage the proposal will do. He said that Democrats should not let “Lindsey Graham dictate what Democrat senators ought to do.” Thursday’s votes came after Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, had set aside this week for senators to try to write a bill from scratch. Some senators said it was possible that lawmakers would attach an immigration bill to a catchall spending measure that must pass by March 23, when funding for the federal government expires.
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Graham punched back at Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and immigration hard-liner. “As long as the president allows Steve Miller and others to run the show down there, we’re never going to get anywhere,” he said. Senator John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said he did not envision Mr. McConnell allowing more time for lawmakers to debate the issue.
The comments by the White House official followed a series of extraordinary actions to try to defeat Mr. Graham’s bipartisan measure. A fact sheet issued by the Department of Homeland Security assailed the proposal, injecting the enforcement agency into the middle of a partisan legislative fight. “I don’t see it,” Mr. Cornyn said. “If we couldn’t get it together this week, I mean, we’ve got other things we have to do, which are pressing.”
In the run-up to the debate, the bipartisan Common Sense Coalition measure, sponsored by seven Democrats, eight Republicans and one independent, was thought to have the best chance to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to pass the Senate.
It would have appropriated $25 billion for border security, including construction of the president’s proposed wall, over a 10-year period — but not immediately, as Mr. Trump demands.
It also included an eventual path to citizenship, over 10 to 12 years, for 1.8 million of the young undocumented immigrants, but would have precluded them from sponsoring their parents to become citizens. And it did not make changes to the diversity visa lottery system, which Mr. Trump wants to end.
The White House attacked the plan as a grievous threat to national security and asserted that its sponsors were either complicit in wanting to undermine the United States’ immigration laws or misinformed about the drastic effects that the proposal would have.
In a conference call with reporters before voting began, a senior White House official lashed out at Mr. Graham. Speaking only on the condition of anonymity despite repeated requests to be on the record, the official accused Mr. Graham of attacking homeland security officials and standing in the way of needed immigration changes.
“Senator Graham has been an obstacle for those reforms,” the official said.
The official accused Mr. Graham of misleading other senators, including Democrats, about the damage the proposal would do, and said that Democrats should not let “Lindsey Graham dictate what Democrat senators ought to do.”
On Capitol Hill, Mr. Graham took aim at Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and an immigration hard-liner. “As long as the president allows Steve Miller and others to run the show down there, we’re never going to get anywhere,” he said.
After the legislative failures in the Senate, top White House officials said they plan to turn their attention to the House, where Republicans are working on a similar hard-line immigration plan that Mr. Trump has also embraced.
Republicans may have more success approving the bill in the House, where they control the chamber and need only a simple majority to pass legislation. On Thursday, Mr. Trump praised the House legislation, saying that it “enshrines” his immigration principles.
In the meantime, advocates estimate that more than 100 of the young immigrants lose their protected status each day. On March 5, they say, the number could rise to as many as 1,400 a day.
And while the president has said repeatedly that he wants to protect the Dreamers — at one point he called on Congress to pass a bipartisan “bill of love” — many blame him for refusing to accept the bipartisan deal.
“The president is not negotiating in good faith,” said Juan Escalante, 28, who was born in Venezuela and now works for America’s Voice, an immigrant rights group. “If you ask me, as an impacted party who essentially has everything to lose — my driver’s license and my work permit and my livelihood in this country — that is not any way to negotiate a deal.”
White House officials are betting that House passage of a bill to protect the Dreamers will put enormous pressure on Democrats in the Senate. But immigrant rights activists and Democrats — and some Republicans in the Senate — have repeatedly vowed to oppose the House legislation, which they call outrageous and hurtful.
That could leave the issue mired in stalemate as neither chamber can embrace legislation that the other chamber is willing to pass.
“No one comes out a winner in this,” a dejected-sounding Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia and a chairman of the Common Sense Coalition, said after the Senate vote. “We tried everything.”