The latest on DACA: What you need to know for the upcoming Congress debate
Dan Nowicki
If Congress can close the deal on a bipartisan budget agreement to keep the government running past Thursday, the Senate is expected to turn its attention to immigration and the soon-to-expire Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and immigration.
The clock is ticking for DACA recipients, the young undocumented immigrants now widely known as "dreamers," who were brought to the United States as children. Then-President Barack Obama, via executive action, created the program to allow them to live and work temporarily in the country without fear of deportation. But President Donald Trump will end it on March 5.
Meanwhile, the dreamers are still a long way from a legislative solution.
Here's how the immigration debate is shaping up now.
McConnell expected to keep his word
As part of the resolution to a three-day partial government shutdown in January, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signaled he would move on to immigration legislation if no consensus was reached on a DACA package before Feb. 8. That's Thursday.
Earlier this week, McConnell indicated the debate will be a race to see which competing immigration plan can clear the Senate's procedural hurdle of 60 votes.
"In the Senate, on those rare occasions when we have these kind of votes and debates, whoever gets 60 wins. It’ll be an opportunity for 1,000 flowers to bloom," McConnell told reporters, per Politico. "The Senate is going to work its will. My hope is we end up passing something."
Can Trump's plan get 60 votes?
As part of the Senate's immigration debate, at least some amendments are expected from each side of the aisle.
Trump wants Congress to enact legislation based on the White House's four-pillar framework that he pitched as a "fair compromise" in his Jan. 30 State of the Union address.
Trump's plan would combine giving legal status to 1.8 million DACA recipients and DACA-eligible immigrants, including a 12-year path to citizenship, with billions of dollars for a border-wall system and other security enhancements. Trump also is calling for restrictions to family-based immigration and the elimination of the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, which uses a lottery to determine which immigrants can come to the United States from countries with low rates of immigration.
But Trump's insistence on a border wall turns off many Democrats, and Republicans only control the Senate with a 51-member majority. Many other immigrant advocates don't want to let Trump use the DACA crisis to push through a major immigration system overhaul that greatly reduces legal immigration.
SEE ALSO:How Trump's wall is complicating a DACA bill
And even some Republicans, among them Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, don't like that the White House framework would reduce legal immigration, which he says is important for future economic growth.
That makes the Trump plan's path to 60 votes difficult.
"If you're looking for 60 votes, the only formula, the only math, the only combination ... is a bill that attracts most if not all Democrats and some, if not many, Republicans," predicted Frank Sharry, the executive director of America's Voice, a liberal national organization that champions immigration reform, and who closely follows immigration politics.
Several bipartisan plans
Flake has been working with a bipartisan group of senators, including Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, on a possible compromise. The White House already has rejected an earlier effort by the group, but they are expected to offer a proposal during the upcoming Senate fight.
Like the White House plan, their earlier proposal combined a 12-year path to citizenship for "dreamers," with money for border security. It also would have put limits on family-based immigration and eliminated the diversity lottery. But Trump deemed it insufficient.
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Chris Coons, D-Del., this week unveiled a bipartisan bill that McCain believes could be a starting point for the discussion. It would provide a pathway to citizenship for the "dreamers" but no border-wall funding. Trump on Monday called any DACA bill without strong border security and a wall "a total waste of time."
McCain's bill is a companion to a bipartisan House measure, the Uniting and Securing America (USA) Act, that has been introduced by Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Pete Aguilar, D-Calif
The "Common Sense Coalition," which includes Flake, could be instrumental in finding a DACA solution with wide bipartisan support, Sharry said.
The group was central to reopening the government during the most recent partial government shutdown.
SEE ALSO:What to know about judge's order on DACA
The House is another story
The Republican-dominated House of Representatives is seen as more fertile ground for Trump's immigration proposal but it is not yet clear that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., can pass a version with only Republican votes.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Wednesday held the House floor for more than eight hours, trying to persuade Ryan to take up the Hurd-Aguilar bill that has been languishing in the chamber.
Pelosi's telling of "dreamer" stories was the longest continuous House speech since at least 1909.
"I don't think the president's framework can get 218 in the House; I think the Hurd-Aguilar could," Sharry said.
House Republican leaders likely will wait to see what, if anything, comes out of the Senate before finalizing their course of action, he said.
What if no proposal gets enough support?
Flake on Thursday said he is developing a contingency plan in case efforts to reach bipartisan compromise fall apart.
As a fallback position, Flake said he will also ready legislation that would merely renew DACA protections for three years in exchange for border-security funding.
"This would be three years in exchange for just the annual kind of border funding based on this year's budget, over three years," Flake told The Arizona Republic. "It would be what the president wants to (use it for), but it wouldn't build much wall. What they have in the budget, in terms of their explanation, is for about 74 miles of new fencing. The president will still call it a wall, I'm sure."
Flake said he is excited about the prospect of a real Senate debate on immigration but worries Democrats might get too much pressure from the left on issues such as the wall and family-unification immigration. Given that Democrats are poised to do well in this year's midterm elections, he said, some might be inclined to wait to negotiate a better deal in the next Congress.
"That doesn't reflect opinion across the board, but some in the (Democratic) base are certainly saying that," Flake told The Republic. "And some Democrats are privately telling me that they are hearing from the base, saying 'Don't give in. Just wait for the midterms.'"
Nowicki is The Arizona Republic's national political reporter. Follow him on Twitter, @dannowicki.
TALKING POLITICS: Listen to our Arizona politics podcast, The Gaggle, on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Stitcher or Google Play.
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