Democrat Cave? Senator Signals an Unconditional Surrender on Immigration Deal
By The Daily Wire. Senior Senate Democrat Dick Durbin (IL) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that legislators are unlikely to reach a deal on the Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) before the president’s March deadline, but that Democrats will not force a second government shutdown over the impasse.
“There is not likely to be a DACA deal, though we’re working every single day on telephone calls and person-to-person to try to reach this bipartisan agreement,” Durbin told host Jake Tapper. “I don’t see a government shutdown coming.”
This leaves Democrats with few options — and no leverage — going into the final weeks of negotiations over an immigration deal that they were, by all accounts, poised to ink with the president. But earlier in January, the deal broke down, reportedly over an included stipulation that would have given indefinite amnesty to parents of DACA recipients even though those parents knowingly violated U.S. immigration law.
When Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) realized he’d lost Republican cooperation, he ordered his colleagues to filibuster a continuing resolution on the budget, sending the government into a three day shutdown. But having lost the media, and activists in both the middle and on the far left, Schumer caved to the president’s shutdown deal and ordered his colleagues to negotiate on the budget and on immigration separately. (Read more from “Democrat Cave? Senator Signals an Unconditional Surrender on Immigration Deal” HERE)
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Fractured GOP Struggles with Immigration Strategy
By The Hill. Republicans are barreling toward a fight over immigration despite divisions on what the party’s strategy should be.
GOP lawmakers decamped Friday from a retreat in West Virginia meant to tout unity around their 2018 agenda without finding a consensus on what to do about recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
The political cacophony comes as the Senate is expected to turn to a debate as soon as this week on the fate of the Obama-era program, which allows certain immigrants brought into the country illegally as children to work and go to school in the U.S. . . .
A growing number of Senate Republicans are backing a scaled-back plan that would include only a DACA fix and a border security package — though the details of such an agreement would still need to be sketched out. (Read more from “Fractured GOP Struggles with Immigration Strategy” HERE)
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