Paul Kane, Washington Post, June 23
Image from article, with caption: People gather at Saint Mark Catholic Church for a solidarity with migrants vigil, Thursday, June 21, 2018 in El Paso, Texas.
In January 2007, soon after a “thumping” in the midterm elections, President George W. Bush met with the new congressional leadership to talk about the agenda for his final two years in office and his hopes for a breakthrough on immigration.
He knew that 23 Senate Republicans had voted in 2006 for legislation granting a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, thinking a new bill would have even more momentum with Democrats now in charge of the House and Senate. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had just been elected speaker, said Bush was stunned when he heard warnings about a rebellion brewing among conservatives that could sink the legislation.
Sure enough, six months later, the Senate choked on its bid to pass a sweeping rewrite of border and immigration laws. It has been this way for a dozen years now, as Congress has tried — and repeatedly failed — to deal with immigrants in the country illegally and to prevent drugs from flowing across the border.
“Breaks my heart every time. Get so close — and nothing happens,” said Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), the No. 2 member of GOP leadership, who has been involved in almost every recent immigration negotiation.
Immigration has eclipsed every other domestic issue in terms of political stalemate. Republicans live in fear of a conservative backlash if they support anything critics deride as “amnesty,” while Democrats champion themselves as the welcoming party but live with the regret of doing nothing when they had their chance.
Indeed, while the current floundering is largely a Republican dilemma, Washington has had every iteration of partisan control of the White House and Congress over the past 12 years, and the result has always been the same: failure.
The legislative futility has created an opening for an aggressive chief executive, and both Democrat Barack Obama and President Trump have acted unilaterally to set policy. Obama, in 2012, cited congressional inaction in creating a program to protect from deportation young undocumented immigrants brought here as children. Trump canceled the program last fall and called on Congress to fix it, something lawmakers still haven’t done. This spring, Trump instituted his “zero-tolerance” policy, including separating migrant children from their parents at the border.
In recent days, House Republicans have flailed in their bid to find the right policy mix to deal with immigrants and strengthen border security. They voted on a conservative GOP draft on Thursday and it failed. Then they pulled the plug, for now, on a more moderate version of the legislation because it was woefully short of the votes needed for passage.
There might be a vote in the coming week, or maybe not at all, as Trump has gone back and forth on his support for the legislation.
Some contend that the president and senior adviser Stephen Miller have poisoned the well with nativist talk and policy proposals. “It’s been within our reach, but as long as Miller is his adviser and is trusted by this president on the issue, it is unlikely we will do anything productive,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Democratic leader who has played a key role in the immigration negotiations.
But some conservatives think the issue is bigger than Trump, that his 2016 presidential campaign just tapped into the strain of nativism that had already spoiled previous attempts at rewriting the border laws. Trump is not the cause but merely the biggest symptom indicating where the most active Republican voters are on immigration.
“This issue has pivoted on amnesty every time, and now it’s pivoting on amnesty,” said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a conservative who has fought every immigration proposal.
King opposed Trump’s offer to Democrats early this year for a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million undocumented young immigrants, in exchange for $25 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Now, King hopes that Trump realizes the conservative base will recoil at anything resembling amnesty. “I think Trump pulled back. I think people have gotten to Trump now and he knows how big this amnesty is,” King said.
The current deadlock has left Washington in the same place it was in 2006, the last time a Republican president and GOP-led Congress tried to reshape immigration laws.
“The debate on immigration is the same as it ever was. Same as it ever was,” said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), reciting lyrics from the 1980 Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime.”
McHenry, now a top vote counter in GOP leadership, arrived in Congress at the dawn of an effort to change immigration laws, beginning with a 2005 enforcement bill that authorized the construction of some border wall and created a system that was supposed to verify employees as legal residents.
The next year, the House and Senate tried to tackle immigration but never resolved the deep differences in their legislation. By June 2007, much to Bush’s surprise, the Senate was deadlocked when Republicans, including Cornyn, abandoned a bill they had been supporting.
“We had a president who was fully committed — President Bush. We did not have Republicans in the Senate willing to go down that path,” said Pelosi, now the House minority leader.
Cornyn accused Democrats, including Obama, then a young senator, of voting for a poison-pill amendment that was a favor to labor unions knowing the result would be “to keep this issue alive for the next campaign.”
After the Latino vote broke heavily for Obama in 2012, leading Republicans such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) started a new round of bipartisan talks that drafted a broad border-and-immigration bill, leading to the bipartisan support of 68 senators.
House Republicans joined some Democrats in their own private negotiations, with the tacit support of Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), fresh off his 2012 vice presidential nomination. But the negotiators could not get past the Senate bill’s support for a path to citizenship at a time when many Republicans were facing difficult primary challenges on their right flank.
Miller, then an aide in the Senate to Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Trump’s pick for attorney general, worked with House allies such as King to increase the pressure. Anyone who supported the Senate bills from 2007 or 2013 was branded “with the scarlet letter A, for amnesty,” King said.
Then Dave Brat, an unknown college professor, defeated the sitting House majority leader, Eric I. Cantor (Va.), in the 2014 Republican primary largely by accusing Cantor of supporting amnesty, ending any hope of an Obama-Republican deal.
The best framework for immigration legislation probably came in 2009 and 2010, when Obama was president and Democrats held majorities in the House and Senate.
But Democrats focused first on an economic stimulus plan and followed that with the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank bill regulating Wall Street. “Those were immediate, important issues. I wish we had time to do more; I certainly would have included immigration in that,” Durbin said.
In the waning days of 2010, Durbin pushed a slimmed-down bill, the Dream Act, that would grant a path to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants, figuring those children were innocents in their parents’ actions. Most “dreamers” have resided in the United States almost their entire lives.
But on the key parliamentary vote, Durbin fell five votes short. Just three Republicans joined Durbin, while five Democrats from largely rural states broke ranks and opposed the Dream Act.
The issue returned to prominence last year when Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The president gave Congress until March to come up with a new law and even sent up his proposal in January for a path to citizenship in exchange for the wall funding. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) signaled that he was willing to make the exchange, but then the negotiations broke down on other issues related to enforcement measures and legal immigration.
The federal government shuttered for a long weekend during that standoff, and after a few failed votes in the Senate, over two days in February, the issue seemed dead because DACA was tied up in federal lawsuits. Only in recent weeks, as moderate House Republicans face pressure at home, has the issue roared back, with failure as the outcome. Again.
Cornyn said the easiest way to handle these issues would be to tackle them one at a time, particularly those with bipartisan support such as keeping families together after they have crossed the border illegally, providing legal status for dreamers and increasing border security funds.
But there is “very little trust” on immigration, Cornyn said.
No comments:
Post a Comment