The Senate voted on Thursday afternoon on four immigration bills, looking for any forward movement on protecting young people brought illegally to the United States as children and beefing up border security.
Every proposal failed.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has teed up votes on four amendments for Thursday to address the plight of those covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which includes about 700,000 people who were brought to the United States illegally as children. President Trump has said he would rescind those protections in early March, putting the onus on Congress to come up with a permanent solution.
The proposals needed 60 votes to advance. The first plan, which would have granted legal status to DACA recipients without any funding for Trump’s border wall, failed 52 to 47. The second amendment, targeting sanctuary cities, has also failed.
A third bill, the product of the broadest bipartisan compromise, with a DACA fix and border funding but minimal legal immigration changes, couldn’t muster the necessary support either. And lastly, the White House’s own immigration demands also failed on the Senate floor, garnering the least support of the four bills.
Trump played his part in Thursday’s showdown: At midday on Thursday, the White House issued a veto threat against the bipartisan bill that seems to have the best shot of winning the 60 votes needed. Before the veto threat, the president’s aides were telling reporters he won’t sign any bill that isn’t his proposed framework — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has crafted a bill based on the White House’s immigration policies.
The Senate opened debate this week with an empty shell of a bill, thanks to a promise made to get out of last month’s government shutdown last month. McConnell pledged an open and fair floor debate, with every proposal getting a chance to earn the 60 votes that would allow it to pass the Senate.
This was supposed to be dramatically different from the Obamacare repeal and tax reform debates of last year, when Senate leadership more or less crafted its own package — with some back-and-forth from its rank-and-file — and put it on the floor for senators to take it or leave it. This time around, any proposal could get a vote, according to McConnell, and it would be up to the senators who are putting it forward to find 60 votes to approve it.
“It gives everybody a shot,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the majority whip, told Vox last week. “It ought to be fascinating.”
But it didn’t yield any actual progress. Here’s what you should know about what happened on Thursday.
Four immigration bills are being put on the Senate floor. Nothing has passed yet.
The Senate voted on four immigration bills on Thursday afternoon; they need 60 votes to advance. They all failed.
First up was a plan by Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE) and John McCain (R-AZ). The Coons-McCain bill would:
- Provide a path to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children
- Offer no money for Trump’s border wall, though it does include some border security measures
It failed 52 to 47, with Democrats almost united in favor and Republicans mostly voting against it.
What it means: The failure of the Coons-McCain plan underlined that, with the Republicans controlling every lever of power in Washington, a bill without any funding for Trump’s infamous border wall is a nonstarter.
The second vote, on an amendment from Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), didn’t actually address DACA or border security. The Toomey amendment would penalize so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to enforce federal immigration policy, by withholding federal funding from those municipalities. The issue has been a fixation for Trump and some of the conservative hardliners in Congress.
It failed 54 to 45. Republicans supported it, while Democrats were mostly opposed.
What it means: Sanctuary cities are a deeply partisan issue, so it is no surprise this failed to win broad bipartisan support. Republicans likely wanted to get vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in 2018 in states that Trump won on the record on the issue.
Third: the so-called Common Sense Caucus, a large bipartisan group led by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), released its own outline. The plan had gained the endorsement of Democratic leadership and is technically being sponsored by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. The “Common Sense” plan would:
- Provide a path to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children
- Offer $25 billion for border security
- Prevent DACA recipients from sponsoring their parents for legal status
It failed 54 to 45. Democrats almost unanimously backed the plan, along with eight Republicans. But the rest of the GOP conference and a handful of Democrats blocked the bill.
What it means: The “Common Sense” plan seemed like it had the best chance of winning 60 votes, but the White House threatened to veto it, and Republicans who had previously been more moderate on immigration refused to support it. This is the most damning vote on Thursday: No other bill seemed viable, and yet even this plan, after the White House’s intervention and amid intransigence from conservatives, could not win the necessary support.
For the fourth and final vote the White House got a vote on its demands, which have been mirrored in legislation from Grassley. The Grassley bill would:
- Provide a path to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children
- Offer $25 billion to fund a southern border wall
- Substantially curtail family immigration and eliminate the diversity visa lottery program in such a way that would gut the legal immigration system
It failed, 39 to 60. Democrats opposed the bill en masse, joined by a notable number of Republicans, while most of the GOP conference supported it.
What it means: Trump’s own preferred immigration plan appears to be unviable in the Senate.
The other immigration plans being floated, explained in brief
Several other immigration proposals have been put forward and could eventually be brought up for a vote. Most notably, there was a bipartisan agreement between Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Dick Durbin (D-IL). The Graham-Durbin plan would offer:
- Provide a pathway to citizenship to more than 2 million young unauthorized immigrants
- Offer about a year’s worth of funding, $2.5 billion, for a border wall
- Eliminate the diversity visa lottery
- Prevent DACA recipients from sponsoring their parents for legal status
But that proposal has been criticized by the White House and conservative hardliners for being too liberal.
Then you have a proposal from Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who had earlier been working with a bipartisan Gang of Six on an immigration plan. The Flake plan would:
- Provide a path to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children
- Fund up to $25 billion for border security
- Eliminate diversity visas, after the program’s backlogs are eliminated
- Restrict family-based migration
Flake has also floated a so-called punt on the DACA issue. The Flake punt would:
- Protect DACA recipients from deportation for three years
- Provide some unspecified border security funding
A bipartisan duo from Colorado, Republican Cory Gardner and Democrat Michael Bennet, has also released their own outline. The Gardner-Bennet plan would:
- Provide a path to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children
- Fund up to $25 billion for border security
- Permanently reauthorizes E-Verify, the voluntary Department of Homeland Security program that checks workers’ immigration status
- Does not change family-based migration
Got it? If you prefer a visual summary, check out this handy chart from Vox’s Alvin Chang. The big picture is: there is really only one issue holding up the immigration talks.
Legal immigration is now the real hurdle to a Senate deal on DACA
There is little disagreement among the various plans on two major issues: the DACA recipients themselves and border security funding.
Every plan — from the Grassley/Trump proposal, to Graham-Durbin, to the new Flake outline — would provide a path to citizenship for young people in the United States who are eligible for DACA. An estimated 1.3 to 1.8 million people who had been brought to the country illegally as children would receive protections under that provision.
On border security, there is still some disagreement — Democrats aren’t eager to give Trump his wall, but they appear willing to fund it to save DACA — but on that issue again, the various plans are coalescing. The White House wants $25 billion and the Grassley bill gives it to them. Flake is now proposing the same funding amount and so is Graham in the latest reported bipartisan “Common Sense” compromise.
The real disagreement, then, is on legal immigration. The White House wants substantial legal immigration cuts, through changes to family-based migration and the diversity visa program. Those provisions have been incorporated into the Grassley plan, even though most of its sponsors don’t actually support cutting legal immigration.
But Democrats and moderate Republicans are balking at such major changes to legal immigration, especially when the more immediate issues of DACA and border security are nearing a resolution. The Common Sense proposal was a new attempt to thread that needle, by restricting family-based immigration for the parents of DACA recipients. But the White House is holding a hard line on its demands.
In other words: The actual crisis at hand, DACA, is no longer the most contentious issue.