Then, Democrats would bring up legislation of their choosing.
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Grassley called the expansion “pretty generous”.
“To begin the debate as the Republican leader suggests would be getting off on the wrong foot”, Schumer said.
Trump has threatened to veto any legislation that doesn’t meet each of his demands.
A proposal offered by Democratic Senator Chris Coons of DE and Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona would give dreamers a path to citizenship and require the Department of Homeland Security to implement a border security strategy by January 2021.
The Grassley bill would provide a 12-year path to citizenship for the DREAMers who have been allowed to stay in the US under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“If they’re going to demand the Stephen Miller wish list, Democrats should say no”, Greisa Martinez Rosas of United We Dream, a major group advocating for DACA recipients, told The Washington Post.
With the exception of the most extreme, if all the legislators say they want a legislative solution for the Dreamers; they have made promises when they have been in majority and minority in Congress. “We are scared that [the government is] going to get rid of it”.
The disagreement pushed any immigration-related votes into today. “It would be a waste of the Senate’s time and a waste of Americans” time”. The prospect of all bills failing could even discourage some Republicans from voting for the Trump-backed plan, the aide said. Jeff Flake and South Carolina Sen. About 700,000 are now protected by the DACA program. He continued: “This will be our last chance, there will never be another opportunity!”
Congress is trying to develop a solution before Trump ends the DACA program March 5. House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he will not bring up a bill for a vote if it does not have Trump’s support. It requires “a comprehensive border strategy, encompassing all known physical barriers, levees, technologies, tools, or other devices that can be used to achieve the above goals along with a justification, including a cost analysis for each linear mile of the border”, while adding new immigration judges and “mandates coordination of federal and global efforts to strengthen the rule of law and economic prosperity in Central America” to address the roots causes of migration.
“The time for political posturing is behind us”, McConnell said later Monday on the Senate floor. Many Republicans back a bill from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., right, walk outside the chamber during debate in the Senate on immigration, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2018.
Many Democrats consider some of the proposals, including limiting the relatives that legal immigrants can bring to the U.S., to be non-starters.
Another bill would offer Dreamers a route to citizenship and provide $25 billion over a decade for President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico.
The bipartisan measure’s sponsors included eight GOP senators.
The president’s plan protects Dreamers and boosts border security funding, but also abolishes the diversity visa lottery and restricts family reunification, a policy Trump calls “chain migration”. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has been leading the talks, told reporters as she headed to a meeting in McConnell’s office. It would allow the young immigrants, known as dreamers, to get only three-year renewable legal status. It would allow for quicker deportations of people caught entering the country, including minors, and people who overstay their visas. David Perdue, a Republican from Georgia, who is backing the Grassley proposal, said the Iowan’s was the “only serious bill I see on the floor so far”. Lawmakers from both parties were growing cynical.
“We’re all a little mystified on why the Democrats are refusing to have the debate and the votes they asked for”, Cotton said Tuesday. “And he had about $300 in his pocket”.
Democrats have sensed that an immigration deal may not come together, and are preparing to pin the blame on Trump.
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But White House officials argued that the Grassley package already represents a significant compromise, pointing to “dramatic concessions” like the proposed pathway to citizenship for nearly 2 million people brought to the country illegally as children and the jettisoning of some immigration enforcement measures, like a nationwide E-Verify system, that were included in the White House’s original immigration proposal last fall.
