The battle over border security and protection for “Dreamers” stalled in the Senate last week, but it’s not over yet, and the issue is likely to become a real hurdle to passing a fiscal 2018 spending bill next month.
Republicans have staunchly opposed linking immigration and government spending in a single bill, but the Senate’s failure to pass an immigration reform bill raises the chances an immigration measure will end up hitching a ride on the upcoming spending bill, which must pass by March 23.
Senate lawmakers, who rejected two standalone measures Thursday that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers in exchange for border security provisions, are now discussing a plan to include a narrow immigration fix in the spending bill.
Republican leaders said they viewed the defeated proposals as “test votes,” that will help them shape how to deal with immigration reform in the government funding bill, which is also known as the omnibus spending package.
“We kind of know what the tolerance is for different ideas,” Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner. “We’ll have another opportunity, perhaps on the omnibus.”
Lawmakers had hoped a deal on lifting federal spending caps would have eased the passage of the omnibus, which would fund the government until Sept. 30.
Democrats in January had to reverse course after they voted to block government funding over immigration, a move that partially shuttered the government for three days. But now both parties seem resigned to adding immigration to the spending package, a move that could make it far more difficult to pass a spending bill by the deadline.
Sources with the Homeland Security Department said they would oppose any deal that excludes an end to chain migration and the visa lottery system. President Trump has also threatened to veto legislation that does not include his reform framework.
The plan to include a Dreamers provision “is not too great,” Cornyn said, because it does not provide a permanent solution for the Dreamers, who came here illegally as children. “But it is kind of where we are,” he said.
Lawmakers say the spending-linked proposal would likely extend for several years the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, which protects Dreamers from deportation and expires on March 5. The DACA extension would likely be coupled with border security funding and possibly other immigration reform provisions, lawmakers said.
“I think people are talking about a much longer extension,” for DACA, said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. “Maybe three years, maybe longer. I think enough to make it so it’s not an issue now.”
Some House lawmakers also anticipate immigration will be included in the spending bill.
Democrats, say GOP lawmakers, are poised to demand the spending measure include protections for Dreamers if a standalone measure is not signed into law by then.
“That’s what they are talking about,” said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho.
In the House, Republicans are planning to take up an immigration reform measure in March, Speaker Paul Ryan said last week.
Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., is working to build support among lawmakers for a bill favored by conservatives and sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-VA., that would protect Dreamers without a pathway to citizenship, provide border security funding, end chain migration and the visa lottery system and make E-verify mandatory for employers. The Goodlatte measure would also create a guest worker program.
The measure, however, does not yet have enough GOP support to pass, in part because lawmakers from agriculture-heavy districts don’t like the guest worker program.
Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas, is leading the effort to round up the backing of those Republicans.
“All the agriculture guys I’m talking to are reasonably leaning into it, trying to get to a yes,” Conaway said.
Ryan, R-Wis., said last week recent court decisions ordering the Trump administration to keep the DACA program in place take away some of the pressure to get a deal done quickly.
“It’s not as important as it was before, given the court rulings,” Ryan said. “But I think this… place works better with deadlines, and we want to operate on deadlines. We clearly need to address this issue in March.”
Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said Ryan would resist linking immigration to the spending bill.
