Senate Democrats Poised to Block Republicans In Immigration Dispute

Bloomberg

By Heidi Przybyla

February 3, 2015

Senate Democrats Poised to Block Republicans In Immigration Dispute 

Senate Democrats are preparing to keep Republicans from blocking President Barack Obama’s decision to shield about 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

After the procedural vote scheduled for Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner would have to decide whether to continue the effort. Republicans are trying to use a spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security to force the president to abandon the immigration orders he announced in November.

“The question is: Do Democrats agree with the president?” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Tuesday in Washington. “We’ll soon find out.”

“Democrats will say no.”  Senator Dick Durbin

With Democrats unified against the strategy and Obama threatening a veto on the spending bill, Republicans are unlikely to get the 60 votes needed to advance the measure. Republicans control the Senate 54-46.

The legislation would provide $39.7 billion for Homeland Security through September. The agency would face a shutdown of non-essential operations if Congress doesn’t agree on a funding plan by the end of this month.

“That’s the direction we’re heading, and that’s really too bad,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said on the Senate floor.

Boehner Tuesday declined to say what the next step would be if the Senate doesn’t advance the bill, H.R. 240.

Cruz, Sessions

“We won this fight in the House. Now it must be fought in the Senate,” Boehner told reporters. He called on Republican Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Jeff Sessions of Alabama to gain backing for the measure in their chamber.

Sessions argued Tuesday for passage of the House measure, saying, “Congress is violating its fundamental duty if it allows the president to carry out powers that he’s not authorized” to have.

During a closed-door session with fellow Republicans earlier Tuesday morning, Boehner rallied members around a theme that Senate Republicans must carry their weight in the fight against Obama’s executive actions, said Representative John Carter of Texas.

Representative Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, said some fellow party members are considering a new strategy to fund the agency while stripping language related to fees and other mechanisms for financing Obama’s orders easing deportations. Those fees would be in a separate bill, he said.

‘Could Happen’

“There’s a lot of talk about that,” said Carter, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee subcommittee on Homeland Security. “It could happen.”

The Homeland Security funding bill, which passed the House on Jan. 14, would also reverse protections ordered in 2012 for children brought to the country illegally.

“There just isn’t room for politics on Homeland Security,” Representative Debbie Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, said in a breakfast Tuesday with Bloomberg News reporters and editors. “We can’t play games with national security. Period.”

Dingell urged that lawmakers pass a “clean” bill funding Homeland Security and said she thinks lawmakers will find a way to do that.

Even as Republicans are seeking to roll back Obama’s orders, they are pursuing another avenue to challenge them. House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions said late Monday the chamber will vote next week on a resolution authorizing leaders to sue Obama over his actions.

“I expect that,” said Sessions of Texas, whose committee sets the floor procedures for such votes.

Changing Emphasis

Some Republicans, including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, have begun to say publicly that their party should change its emphasis.

During a breakfast with reporters Jan. 21, Rubio said, “I would prefer we would spend the majority of our time actually acting on our immigration reform platform” instead of trying to reverse Obama’s orders.

Separately, Republicans are looking for a way to strengthen U.S. border security. They pulled a $10 billion border-security measure from the House floor last week amid criticism from some Republicans that it should include security improvements inside the U.S., in addition to those at the borders. Democrats said the bill was flawed and partisan.

Combining increased border security with other immigration proposals is the only way to gather enough support from Democrats and Republicans to rewrite immigration laws, said Stuart Anderson, who led the Immigration and Naturalization Service under former President George W. Bush.

“We’ve been trying for a real long time to do enforcement alone and it’s just not successful,” Anderson said.

Anderson said a “bracero” program that allowed temporary laborers from Mexico into the U.S. during the 1950s led to a 95 percent decline in border apprehensions from 1953 to 1959. The program ended in 1964.

“The most effective way to reduce illegal immigration is not through just piling on enforcement but to have more visas to have lower-skilled people come in and fulfill jobs,” Anderson said.

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