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GOP immigration allies disappear as crisis mounts

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...eam-act-477065

Quote:

Lindsey Graham introduced a bipartisan immigration bill 43 days ago. But if it came up on the Senate floor today, he wouldn’t support it.

“God, no,” the South Carolina Republican senator scoffed in an interview. “I’m not in support of legalizing one person until you’re in control of the border.”

Quote:

'Several GOP senators remain interested in helping the Dreamer population of undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, but they’re increasingly reluctant to do so amid a wave of cross-border migration.

“Many of us support giving a path to citizenship” to that population of mostly younger immigrants, said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the only Republican to support Biden’s Health and Human Services nominee on Thursday. “But now the border is such a disaster that I don’t see how you can do just a bill to deal with Dreamers.”

Quote:

Putting aside that McCain and Flake are no longer in office and Rubio has shied away from the Senate’s past few years of fruitless negotiations, a new group of Republicans is theoretically in the mix for immigration talks. Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) are all mentioned by Democrats as potential partners.

Romney, Tillis and Lankford all said this week that a clean DREAM Act is not currently an option.

Durbin, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said that his available roster of potential partners is slim in today’s GOP. His committee is filled with hardliners like Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who are almost certain to lead the charge against anything he can come up with.

“When you sit down and draw up the list of potential Republicans that might come on board, it is challenging. It isn't like we have 20 and we got like the first 10. I wish,” Durbin said, lamenting that his DREAM Act is filibustered every time it comes up for a standalone vote. ”Trump really set the stage and said, ‘Immigration is going to be an issue for the future of the Republican Party. And we're against it.’”

Graham’s not alone in now rejecting immigration legislation he previously supported while insisting on beefing up border security. Tillis once offered a 15-year pathway to citizenship for young people who entered the country illegally but said he couldn’t support that Republican proposal at the moment.

“There’s no scenario I would support even what we called the SUCCEED Act, which was a path to citizenship for the [Dreamers], without it being paired with border security," Tillis said, referring to the conservative alternative to the DREAM Act that he had endorsed.

Quote:

Romney, Collins, Portman, Tillis and Rounds are part of the Senate’s so-called Group of 20, a bipartisan crew that’s given itself the daunting assignment of making the Senate work again, even as liberals eye gutting the filibuster over GOP opposition to their priorities — such as the DREAM Act. That group could be the venue for shaping an immigration deal, but its talks are only in the earliest stages and sprawl across an array of areas.

“I’m in the bipartisan group, but we haven’t touched it,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). “There’s a problem that needs to be fixed, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near stepping up to it right now.”

Nothing really new here...no one expected a clean DREAM Act even before the 'border crisis'.