DREAM Act Portal Forum - Dems eye linking immigration reform to border bill

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If House Republicans pass a pared-down funding bill for the border crisis, Senate Democrats are warning they may try to attach the Gang of Eight’s comprehensive immigration reform bill to the package.

The complicated calculus reflects the fact that the Senate’s own $3.57 billion border supplemental legislation appears unlikely to pass a procedural vote on Wednesday. So if the House is able to pass its $659 million supplemental bill on Thursday, Senate Democrats may press to attach their sweeping 2013 immigration reform bill to the House’s legislation, according to several Senate Democratic aides.

That move would likely doom whatever the House passes by daring Republicans to consider an immigration reform package they’ve ignored for more than a year.

“The only way any piece of the House proposal could become law is if it was conferenced with the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, which is something we’d certainly consider,” a senior Democratic aide said Tuesday.

The four GOP members of the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill have already warned against any proposal that links President Barack Obama’s request for border aid money with the immigration legislation that cleared the Senate last year with the support of 14 Republicans.

“While we continue to support the goals of comprehensive immigration reform, none of us would support including that bill in legislation needed this year to address the current humanitarian crisis on our southern border,” said Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina plus John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Senate Democrats won’t support the policy changes in the House GOP legislation because it revises a 2008 anti-trafficking law that guarantees children from Central America a chance to make their case in immigration court, rather than being sent back across the border quickly like minors from Mexico or Canada.

And Democratic backers of the Senate’s immigration bill have argued that had the House passed the Senate’s broad immigration reform bill, the influx of migrant children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala that the United States is now experiencing may never have materialized. Democrats say the extra money for law enforcement and judicial services at the border would have blunted the influx of migrants from the drug-riddled Central American countries.

Republicans disagree with that analysis and are instead pursuing an aid bill that narrowly addresses the border. And the plotting of Senate Democrats’ to link the immigration reform bill to the House’s border legislation only seems to confirm House conservatives’ worst fears about Senate Democratic leaders.

“Sen. Chuck Schumer has repeatedly urged the House to pass some immigration legislation of any kind so that when it gets to the Senate, he can then morph it into the Senate Gang of Eight bill,” said Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.). “That is the cause for the concern.”

The Senate plans to hold a procedural vote on the Democratic supplemental package on Wednesday, which also includes $225 million for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and $615 million to fight wildfires in the West.

If that package fails, Democrats are mulling holding a separate vote on just the Israel and wildfire-funding before heading home for a five-week recess at the end of this week. That would probably leave Obama’s border request in limbo until September given the House’s loathing for the Senate’s comprehensive immigration legislation.

Republicans took to the Senate floor on Tuesday morning to declare their support for Israel as it wages war in Gaza against Hamas. Given the broad support for Iron Dome funding among Republicans, Western Democrats — including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from Nevada — would likely press for $615 million in wildfire money as a compromise before jetting home for recess.

“It’s being talked over right now,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) of splitting up the supplemental package. “There are parts of it like Iron Dome that are so universally popular, that some members want to single that part out and identify with it.”