And yet even Republicans who are open to more liberal immigration policies are now blocking this approach, as President Biden has the party’s railways to do no more work to end the crisis, i.e. the required 60 votes in an evenly divided chamber. Getting any immigration bill going forward remains a difficult task.
“In eight years, the world has changed – dramatically,” said Florida San Marco Rubio, a Republican architect on the 2013 bill.
Asked if he would now support any broader efforts, Rubio said: “Not in a big bill, no. You have to do it in pieces.”
But doing it in pieces opens up a whole sweet of other problems.
Senior Senate Republicans are demanding stricter border security provisions and a ban on asylum seekers from being involved in any such proposal. Yet if Democrats agree with such an approach, they are bound to react to progressives – especially in the House.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said it would be much easier to do something if the administration wanted to control the boundaries. Pismal asked about moving the proposals.
“I’ve said for a long time: the right wants to load 11 million people and get them out of the country or they’re not going to vote for the bill, and the left wants to be legalized, or give everyone citizenship yesterday,” Grassley said. “And you can’t get 60 or 70 votes when you’re facing.”
Tight between Democrats
“I think we have a lot of potential to deal with different elements,” Durbin said.
Some Democrats pushed back on those comments.
“I don’t think that’s acceptable,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, said Tuesday night that she was asked how Aadhaar would react if Democrats did not move forward with a plan to get 11 million citizenship. Undocumented immigrants.
New Mexico Democrat Sen. Ben Ray Luzen added: “I don’t believe any of us should stop moving forward to get more support for comprehensive immigration reforms. … I wouldn’t accept progress on comprehensive immigration reform.”
And even senators sitting for relaxation are sticking to that approach.
Arizona Democrat Sen. “We need deep, comprehensive immigration reforms,” said Mark Kelly, who spoke to Biden about the humanitarian situation on the border. Asked if he sees the border situation as a crisis, which the White House has refused to do, the swing-state Democrat said: “Yes. I mean it’s an extremely challenging situation.”
But some top Democrats seem to favor the rhetoric of the White House.
“I wouldn’t call it an emergency,” Derby said. “But it’s definitely a challenge.”
Some Democrats consider budget process to advance party-line vote on immigration
Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, has not said whether he will use the conciliation process for immigration law – and ultimately that call will be from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Democrat Sen. of Virginia. “You have to have the vote of every Democrat to compromise. We haven’t had that conversation yet about whether we’ll have every Democrat vote on it,” Tim Cain said.
West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin said that instead of compromising, he wants his party to “return to regular order.” “You can’t believe that everything is the opposite of everything because this place has become so (complete) tribalism. Someone has to try to put it back in place.”
On Tuesday, Schumer refused to try to pass a comprehensive bill, and told reporters: “I strongly want a comprehensive immigration reform to be passed.” He added that “we will do our best to explore that area.”
For many Democrats who have tried to draft a comprehensive immigration bill over the years, the political reality is that many of their Republican allies who were willing to negotiate or vote on a comprehensive immigration reform bill – or not ready to return to the table.
Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said, “I think what Sen. Derby had in mind was to try to keep up with the pieces of immigration reform. That seems like a way to go more realistically.” “Republicans are always afraid of their own shadow when it comes to immigration reform.”
Delaware Democrat Sen. Chris Koons added: “Sometimes you have to start with a trivial bilateral proposal and see what else you can build on it.”
In the House, Democratic leaders plan to schedule votes this weekend on two bills aimed at giving recipients under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, the path to citizenship and expanding the country’s agricultural workers program. The bill passed the House in the last Congress and is expected to be passed again, but it is also a bipartisan move in the Senate.
San Lindsay Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and author of the 2013 Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill, told CNN that now is not the time for legislation to legalize recipients of the DACA program.
“I’m all for taking care of the dreamers, but you don’t want to take care of them and at the same time encourage another way of legal immigration so there’s no window to do anything because the flow on that stream” has to control the border, “Graham said. .
Other Republicans say any effort to legalize dreamers or increase visas for agricultural workers will need to come with stronger border security provisions, which could deter progressives from supporting the final deal.
“I think there are a lot of us who are willing to work on immigration bills, but it has to be very targeted and we have to deploy some practice of checking,” said Iowa Republican Sen. Johnny Ernst.
The story was updated on Tuesday with additional details.
CNN’s Sarah Fortinsky and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.
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