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Beverly Hills, California, United States
Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Wednesday, January 31, 2018

A Congressman Suggests ‘Dreamers’ Be Arrested. Capitol Hill Rolls Its Eyes.

New York Times
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg
January 30, 2018

Standing outside in the freezing cold, dressed in a new navy blue suit and red tie, Leonardo Reyes was feeling a little overwhelmed Tuesday afternoon as he headed to Capitol Hill for President Trump’s State of the Union address. He was the guest of his home-state senator, Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon.

“It feels a little strange,” Mr. Reyes said. “It’s not just the suit. It’s the fact that we are in this space where people have the power to determine the outcome of your life.”

Mr. Reyes, 27, is a so-called Dreamer, a young undocumented immigrant shielded from deportation under an Obama-era initiative that Mr. Trump rescinded. Democrats had invited several dozen of them to sit in the gallery overlooking the well of the House on Tuesday night to put a face on the roiling congressional debate over their future.

That seemed like a good plan — until Representative Paul Gosar called the cops.

Mr. Gosar, Republican of Arizona, who is known as an immigration hard-liner, provoked considerable eye-rolling on Capitol Hill on Tuesday when he wrote on Twitter that he had contacted the Capitol Police, as well as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, “asking they consider checking identification of all attending the State of the Union address and arresting any illegal aliens in attendance.”

In a second post, he asked that those using “fraudulent social security numbers and identification to pass through security” be arrested.

And in case anyone missed his point, he followed with a third: “Of all the places where the Rule of Law needs to be enforced, it should be in the hallowed halls of Congress,” Mr. Gosar tweeted. “Any illegal aliens attempting to go through security, under any pretext of invitation or otherwise, should be arrested and deported.”

Mr. Gosar’s fellow Arizona Republican, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, took to Twitter in response, “This is why we can’t have nice things.”

To that, Mr. Gosar jabbed back, referencing Mr. Flake’s pending retirement at the end of the year, “This is why you got forced out of office.”

The powers that be on Capitol Hill did not take appear to take Mr. Gosar as seriously as he took himself. A spokeswoman for the Capitol Police did not return an email request for comment, and AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, dismissed Mr. Gosar’s suggestion with six succinct words.

“Clearly, the speaker does not agree,” Ms. Strong said.

But, this being Washington, Democrats did not miss an opportunity to pounce.

“What he said is outside the circle of decency in terms of members of Congress,” Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, told reporters. She added: “We believe that we’re children of God, and we all have a spark of divinity in us, and for him to make that statement is to dishonor the God who made us. It’s just shameful.”

Mr. Reyes came to the United States from Mexico when he was 10 with his mother, who was escaping an abusive relationship. She worked in canneries and in the fields, he said; today Mr. Reyes works as a “bilingual eligibility specialist,” helping elderly and disabled people figure out if they qualify for government services like Medicaid and food stamps. In his spare time, he is an immigration advocate.

He never expected Congress to roll out the red carpet for him. But he did not expect anyone to suggest that he be arrested either. He has been in the United States legally since 2012, when he applied for protection from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA.

“I refuse to be intimidated,’’ Mr. Reyes said, adding: “I’m not just here representing myself. I’m here representing my family back at home, representing my friends, individuals I’ve met along this journey whose life is in the balance, who are every day waking up with uncertainty.”

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

Republicans balk at Trump’s cuts to legal immigration

Politico
By Seung Min Kim
January 30, 2018

It’s no surprise that Democrats have panned the White House’s immigration framework. But now Republicans are increasingly uncomfortable with President Donald Trump’s proposal to deeply cut legal immigration in exchange for protecting nearly two million Dreamers.

The barebones framework released late last week, which Trump is expected to promote during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, would fundamentally reshape the nation’s immigration system by no longer allowing U.S. citizens to sponsor parents, adult children and siblings for green cards — amounting to the biggest proposed reduction in legal immigration in decades, experts say.

That idea, at least in concept, isn’t sitting well with many Republicans.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said while the overall plan from Trump was “credible,” he would not support such significant cuts to the legal immigration side.

“The idea of cutting legal immigration in half and skewing the green cards to one area of the economy, I think, is bad for the economy,” Graham said, referring to the administration’s broad pitch to shift to a merit-based immigration system. “Not a whole lot of support for that. I want more legal immigration, not less.”

On the administration’s proposal to restrict legal immigration, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said: “We can agree to disagree to begin with, but we still get to write it.”

“Honestly, I think we need legal immigration,” Rounds added. “In the United States today, our population would not be stable if it was not for legal immigration. I’m in favor of having legal immigration. I want to eliminate the illegal immigration.”

Yet clamping down on family-based migration is a consistent and fundamental pillar of Trump’s immigration demands, and it’s unclear how much he is willing to compromise on cutting off so-called “chain migration” in his quest for a Dreamer deal. The mixed reaction to Trump’s plan only underscores the divisions within the GOP and the difficulties in reaching a bipartisan agreement on immigration.

Trump’s allies in Congress, including GOP Sens. David Perdue of Georgia and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have stressed restrictions on family-based migration are a priority. For conservative hard-liners in the House, the administration’s plan is actually too generous in offering a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Still other Republicans say tackling such legal immigration cuts is far too complicated a challenge to solve when 690,000 young immigrants without legal status are in danger of losing temporary deportation protections under an Obama-era directive.

The Trump administration has long spoken favorably of shifting the nation’s immigration system to one largely based on merit. And some Republicans say they’re fine with restricting migration based on the luck of family ties as long as those green cards get rerouted to immigrants with highly coveted skills.

But it’s unclear when the debate about those changes — which would come in a “phase two” of immigration reform — would materialize on Capitol Hill. The framework doesn’t go into detail on any merit-based changes, and Trump himself endorsed legislation from Cotton and Perdue last summer that would slash legal immigration levels by 40 percent in just one year.

Lawmakers have generally tried to overhaul the immigration system in one big package, despite multiple failed efforts to do so — believing Congress needs to tackle all the thorny issues simultaneously.

“We’ve got to have a discussion about our workforce in the future and in that discussion, we ought to also have the discussion about where those visas go,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said. “If you’re going bigger, and this has the effect of cutting the legal workforce by a third or by a half, that is not good for the economy and not good for our entitlement programs or anything else we want to fund in the future.”

One estimate released Monday by the libertarian Cato Institute, which supports more open immigration laws, found that the levels of legal immigration could plunge about 44 percent under the White House proposal. That, according to the think tank, could be the “largest policy-driven legal immigration cut since the 1920s.”

A bipartisan plan devised by six senators tried to sate Trump’s demands on “chain migration” by barring parents of Dreamers from being sponsored by their soon-to-be-legalized children. It also delays green card holders from being able to sponsor their adult children until they obtain citizenship. But the administration and its congressional allies immediately said that wasn’t enough.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, a key bellwether for Senate Republicans on immigration, said he was fine with new family-based restrictions as long as the administration processed the number of green card applications that were already pending.

That amounts to a years-long backlog, and the administration has proposed doing so. But that, in turn, is drawing fire from immigration hawks because that amounts to at least 3.9 million foreigners waiting for visas, according to State Department figures, and even more applicants who are backlogged at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

In Alaska, GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski says she regularly hears from the sizable Filipino community about the immigration system and how it can take nearly two decades for them to sponsor relatives. They regularly urge her for more equity in the legal immigration system, she said.

“I need to look really carefully at it because in my state, it’s the issue of legal immigration that is as compelling as anything,” Murkowski said of Trump’s framework. “So I’d like to try to figure out a way that we can work fairly with the legal immigration system.”

Combined with deep resistance from Democrats on upending the nation’s family-based immigration system, it appears unlikely Trump’s proposal can survive Capitol Hill intact. A smattering of senators who have been regularly meeting in Sen. Susan Collins’ (R-Maine) office haven’t even gone into such specifics on legal immigration, senators say. Instead, they’ve focused on building support for a barebones base bill that could serve as a starting point for the expansive floor debate that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has promised.

Now, some senators such as Collins say Congress would be better off brokering a narrower deal that allows Congress to pass legislation protecting Dreamers by the Trump-imposed March 5 deadline.

“My preference would be that we deal with the Dreamer population and border security at this point,” Collins said. “The other issues are extremely complex and I think require more time.”

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said he would be “fine” with simply codifying the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program into law. But by going further than that and offering citizenship to 1.8 million Dreamers under Trump’s plan, Portman noted: “The bigger you get, in this case, the harder it is. It would attract concern on both sides.”

Such a pared-down measure, however, is also almost certain to crash into resistance in the more conservative House — where many lawmakers say the White House’s proposal is too liberal.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who helped strike a significant border security deal during the 2013 immigration fight, said Trump’s overall plan was “pretty good.”

But, he added, “I understand the way it’s set up, there could be some cuts to legal immigration. I understand that’s problematic to many people.”

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

Federal Judge in Brooklyn Criticizes Trump and Sessions in DACA Hearing

Wall Street Journal
By Nicole Hong
January 30, 2018

A Brooklyn federal judge criticized President Donald Trump’s comments about Latino immigrants as “vicious” and “extremely volatile” during court arguments Tuesday over whether to stop the Trump administration from rescinding protections for undocumented immigrants who entered the U.S. as children.

In a 90-minute hearing, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, repeatedly denounced Mr. Trump’s previous comments about Latinos, saying they were “incendiary” and often “completely erroneous.”

In the country’s history, “this is not ordinary,” Judge Garaufis said. “It’s not what we see from our leaders.”

The plaintiffs who sued the Trump administration, including 16 states, have argued the decision to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was driven by animus toward Latinos, which could violate equal protection under the U.S. Constitution. They are seeking an injunction that would keep DACA in place.

In their brief, the plaintiffs cited several anti-Latino statements made by Mr. Trump, such as his remarks about Mexicans when his presidential campaign was announced.

Stephen Pezzi, a lawyer for the Justice Department, said a win for the plaintiffs on the equal protection argument could prevent agencies under the Trump administration from imposing any future policy with a disproportionate impact on Latinos.

Mr. Pezzi said the administration rescinded DACA because of the litigation threat from conservative states and the determination that the program was illegal.

A spokeswoman for the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment.

Those standing outside the courthouse Tuesday heard from New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman. The plaintiffs in the case include 16 states, who have argued the decision to terminate DACA was driven by animus toward Latinos.

Last week, Mr. Trump proposed a path to citizenship for the 1.8 million undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, many of whom were protected under DACA from deportation, if lawmakers agree to fund expanded border security and other changes. So far, no deal has been reached.

Judge Garaufis appeared to struggle with how much to weigh Mr. Trump’s prior comments in determining whether to temporarily block the unwinding of DACA, saying he couldn’t ignore them.

“I’m not sure what the answer is,” Judge Garaufis said.

Colleen Melody, a lawyer with the Washington state attorney general’s office, questioned whether DACA would have been rescinded if it affected children from Norway, referring to Mr. Trump’s comments about wanting more immigrants from Norway.

Judge Garaufis said he recently visited Norway and “most of the people I ran into were white.”

In a similar case, a San Francisco federal judge earlier this month issued a nationwide injunction temporarily halting the end of DACA and ordered the Trump administration to consider DACA renewal applications. The plaintiffs in Brooklyn say they need a broader injunction to allow for the processing of new DACA applicants.

The Justice Department has appealed the San Francisco ruling both to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and directly to the Supreme Court. The justices could say as early as mid-February whether they will hear the case.

Judge Garaufis on Tuesday also criticized statements by Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the role of the judiciary.

In a speech to the Heritage Foundation last year, Mr. Sessions cited a comment from Judge Garaufis at a hearing in the same case in which he said the government “can’t come into court to espouse a position that is heartless.” Mr. Sessions said comments like this are “highly offensive and disrespectful” of the legislative and executive branches.

Getting visibly angry, Judge Garaufis said of Mr. Sessions, “He seems to think the courts cannot have an opinion.”

In a statement, a Justice Department spokesman said the agency remains confident that the Department of Homeland Security “had the lawful authority to rescind DACA.”

Among the attendees of Tuesday’s hearing were Eric Schneiderman, the New York state attorney general who’s leading the lawsuit, and Chad Readler, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division.

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

Immigration Talks Proliferate on Capitol Hill, but No Deals

Wall Street Journal
By Kristina Peterson and Laura Meckler
January 30, 2018

The Senate is expected to begin considering immigration legislation next week, and none of the lawmaker groups devoted to the topic have figured out how to close the divide among Democrats, Republicans and GOP President Donald Trump.

The proliferation of groups has highlighted both lawmakers’ widespread interest in immigration, and the chaos that the issue has produced on Capitol Hill. Even lawmakers and congressional aides who closely follow the issue aren’t always sure how many groups are meeting, much less what they are discussing.

“All of us are participating either minimally or maximally in all of these different things. It’s now a swirl,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.). “I don’t think anybody’s supposed to be keeping it straight, but it will come together,” she predicted.

There is no consensus as to how broad the bill should be, with some lawmakers advocating a narrow focus on border security and Dreamers—the undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children. Others want to wrap in additional, more contentious aspects of immigration policy.

There is disagreement about whether the Dreamers should be given citizenship or just legal status. On border security, Republicans want a border wall plus a broad set of policy changes that affect those who cross the border, while Democrats want more technology and, perhaps, personnel. And there is sharp debate over whether the bill should make big changes or just small ones to the legal immigration system now in place.

Mr. Trump kicked off the complex debate in September, when he ended an Obama-era program shielding the Dreamers from deportation and gave Congress until March 5 to pass a replacement.

As part of a deal to reopen the government after a three-day shutdown, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said he would bring an immigration bill to the floor on Feb. 8, when the government’s current funding expires, if lawmakers haven’t yet resolved the issue.

For months, negotiations centered on a bipartisan group of six to eight senators, who produced a bill spearheaded by Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), but which was later rejected by Mr. Trump.

Then, a bipartisan group of roughly 20 senators emerged to try to help chart a path out of shutdown. That group, calling itself the Common Sense Coalition, is now holding its own immigration talks, meeting over Girl Scout cookies in the office of Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) on Monday night.

Separately, a group of nearly 40 senators met in the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing room last week to brainstorm over ideas. And conservative Senate Republicans are meeting on their own.

Meanwhile, in the House, a group of four Republicans led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) unveiled their own far more conservative immigration bill this month. That is attractive to House conservatives, so GOP leaders are holding “listening sessions” to discuss it.

Two House bipartisan groups have unveiled more centrist proposals—one from the Problem Solvers Caucus on Monday that is almost identical to the Graham-Durbin bill, and one from a group led by Reps. Will Hurd (R., Texas) and Pete Aguilar (D., Calif.).

There is just one group that combines lawmakers from both the House and Senate: a quartet of the No. 2 leaders from each party in each chamber, whose importance has varied with the day. Late last week, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R., Texas) called this group of deputies “history,” meaning they would likely dissolve. But he later revisited that assessment. “Glad I was wrong: the twos meet again this afternoon,” he tweeted Monday.

As with most policy fights on Capitol Hill, senators said they were most likely to hammer out the compromise needed to clear their chamber’s 60-vote threshold, a prospect that angers conservative House Republicans, who don’t want to be forced to swallow the Senate version.

“I have a wariness of anything that starts in the Senate,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R., N.C.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said Tuesday. “When you start with consensus in a moderate body, you get a less-than-conservative bill.”

But senators from both parties said a bill that can pass the GOP-led House on party lines is likely to come up short in the Senate. They think the group led by Ms. Collins is likely to build momentum for a bipartisan bill that could clear the Senate, even if that cluster of lawmakers is not expected to produce actual legislative text.

“It’s got to be that group displaying leadership and making sure that this is done in good faith and doesn’t turn into just an opportunity for people to make fodder for campaign ads,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii), who isn’t part of the group.

Mr. Durbin said senators in the bipartisan group have been bringing ideas to him and Mr. Cornyn, who are acting as their party’s leaders on immigration in the Senate. Mr. Durbin said the fact that both he and Mr. Cornyn are in the group of four deputies suggests that it could help broker a deal with the House.

“If we could agree within that group—Cornyn and I are both there—perhaps that would be the path to a bicameral approach,” he said. But Mr. Durbin said there was still considerable uncertainty over which group would ultimately produce a widely acceptable deal. “That is a good and unresolved question,” he said.

Last week, Mr. Trump produced a framework of his own that would give 1.8 million undocumented young immigrants a path to citizenship as long as Congress agreed to spend $25 billion toward a U.S.-Mexico border wall and other security measures, reduce family-based legal immigration, ratchet up deportations and otherwise tighten enforcement.

Conservative House Republicans grumbled about elements of the proposal in the House GOP’s closed-door meeting Tuesday morning, criticizing the decision to allow undocumented immigrants to become citizens.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) has said he is unlikely to bring any bill to the floor that Mr. Trump doesn’t support. But if Mr. Trump is in favor, Mr. Ryan is betting conservatives will come along, too. “We’re not going to bring a bill through here that the president’s not going to support,” Mr. Ryan said earlier this month. “What would be the point of passing something that doesn’t go into law?”

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com

Immigration Fight Shifts From Trump’s Wall to Family Green Cards

Bloomberg Politics
By Sahil Kapur
January 31, 2018

President Donald Trump’s wall is no longer the biggest divide between Democrats and Republicans on immigration. The potential deal-breaker may be the status of mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of immigrants.

Trump and Republican hard-liners in Congress are demanding that any agreement resolving the legal status of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children must end the ability of citizens to sponsor siblings, parents or adult children for a green card, which confers permanent residency and all but assures citizenship over time.

In his first State of the Union address, Trump on Tuesday gave only scant mention to the wall but warned of the danger posed by criminals among undocumented immigrants and those who entered the U.S. through a visa lottery system and family sponsorships.

“Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives,” he said, drawing some boos from Democrats in the chamber. “Under our plan, we focus on the immediate family by limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children. This vital reform is necessary — not just for our economy, but for our security, and for the future of America.”

He called it “a down-the-middle compromise.”

Democrats React

Democrats didn’t see it that way.

“The White House agenda is to gut legal immigration in exchange for allowing some of the Dreamers to live here,” Democratic Representative Luis Gutierrez of Illinois said after Trump’s speech. “For those of us who support legal immigration, and that’s most Democrats and many Republicans, it won’t fly.”

The negotiations on immigration between Congress and the White House have overwhelmed debate on most other issues and hindered action on the federal budget and spending. After Democrats used their leverage to hold up votes in the Senate on a temporary government funding bill — triggering a three-day federal shutdown — concessions were put on the table.

Why U.S. Immigration Overhaul Debate Is So Heated: QuickTake

While Democrats have derided Trump’s demand for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, they’ve largely accepted the idea of more funding for border security — though the amount is still in question — including construction of barriers along some portion of the southern frontier. A resolution on that is likely to end in border security funding that Trump can sell to his core supporters as a down payment on a wall while Democrats tell their voters it’s not a real wall.

The White House offered legal status for those eligible for coverage under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, as well as giving them a path to citizenship over a 10- to 12-year period.

But Trump as reiterated in his address on Tuesday, he wants to close off sponsorship of immigrant parents and siblings by all U.S. citizens, which Republicans call chain migration.

Such a policy change would upend a bedrock of U.S. immigration policy since 1965 and drastically cut the number of legal immigrants let into the country.


Family-based immigration has accounted for 60 to 70 percent of all green cards in the last decade, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based research group. In 2013, for instance, two-thirds of the nearly 1 million green cards granted were on the basis of a family relationship.

Trump’s proposal would cut legal immigration by 44 percent annually, or about half a million, and prevent some 22 million people from being able to immigrate to the U.S. over the next five decades, according to a study released Monday by the Cato Institute, a libertarian research group in Washington.

Since the White House first announced the framework, the stalemate has resumed.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a Trump ally and a sponsor of legislation that would curtail legal immigration, said cutting extended-family sponsorships is “a core part” of any legalization deal. He and like-minded conservatives say immigration should be based an individual’s ability to contribute to the economy.

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the lead negotiator on immigration for Democrats, said earlier this week that the limit on family migration would represent “a dramatic change” and is “one of the most serious problems in the Republican proposal.”

Dividing Families

“The strength of American families has been a pillar of our country for as long as I can remember,” said Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat. “And to limit family reunification and to literally divide families from their children is inconsistent with the values that I thought both parties embraced.”

Frank Sharry, who runs the pro-immigration group America’s Voice, said the policy change would represent “radical nativism” and “destroy the cornerstone of our nation’s immigration history.”

It’s not clear how — or if — that political divide can be bridged.

There are a flurry of competing proposals on the table. Family green cards are limited to spouses and minor children in the Trump administration framework and in legislation led by Republican House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia.

Competing Plans

Competing bipartisan plans — one in the Senate from Durbin and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, and the other the House by a group of representatives who call themselves the Problem Solvers Caucus — would preserve family-based immigration for American citizens while barring newly legalized “dreamers,” as the DACA recipients are called, from sponsoring extended family.

House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and cosponsor of the Goodlatte proposal, said limiting extended-family immigration is “very important” to reaching a deal to protect young beneficiaries of the DACA program that Trump has ordered to an end after March 5.

The policy change would accomplish much of what Cotton and Republican Senator David Perdue of Georgia set out to do in the RAISE Act, which they advertised as a plan to cut legal immigration in half, largely by limiting family sponsorships. Trump backed that bill at the time, and is now seeking to include its core provisions in a DACA fix.

Demographic Shifts

The 1965 law has contributed to demographic shifts that have led to a fast-growing Hispanic population, which has inflamed the U.S. immigration debate and heightened racial tensions that Trump capitalized on in his 2016 campaign.

It’s a sea change from past immigration debates in 2013 and 2007, when Democrats and Republicans were largely united in favor of legal immigration. A 2013 overhaul that passed the Senate with 68 votes and stalled in the House would have narrowly limited family-based immigration — it banned U.S. citizens from sponsoring siblings and restricted sponsorship of married children to those under 31. The bill also gave a path to citizenship for some 11 million people in the U.S. illegally and substantially expanded merit-based visas.

Graham is skeptical whether Democrats will agree to major legal immigration cuts as part of a DACA deal.

“You can make some changes to chain migration. You can get some of that. The more you give, the more you get,” Graham said. Democrats won’t give the GOP “all we want on border, merit-based immigration, and the end of family immigration based on DACA,” he said.

But that’s a tough sell for the White House — and in the Republican-led House, which leans conservative on immigration and refused to allow a vote on Senate-passed bills in 2006 and 2013. Many fear such a scenario could repeat itself, with the Senate expected to bring up an immigration bill by Feb. 8.

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Senate Republican, voiced frustration this week with the state of negotiations, tweeting: “On #DACA, both parties seem to want the quid without the quo.”

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com