With no more deadline, Congress has stopped talking about immigration

JJ Glo · 03-01-2018, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Take away a deadline, and Congress will simply lose its focus on any issue — even the heated debate around immigration.

At Tuesday morning’s House Republican briefing, just one of the five GOP leaders made a reference to the issue, and it was a passing one — a proposal meant mostly to placate conservatives, not a real solution that could get signed into law.

Across the Capitol, a few hours later, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and four senior Republicans did their weekly briefing. Topics ranged from gun background checks to the Winter Olympics. There was no immigration talk at all.

The four Senate Democrats who followed McConnell also made no mention of the looming Monday deadline to resolve the fate of 800,000 undocumented immigrants who have been shielded from the threat of deportation under an expiring executive order.

It’s understandable that most of the attention has shifted toward the fallout of the Valentine’s Day massacre of 17 students and faculty at a Florida high school, with the media intensely focused on gun laws and school violence.

This was supposed to be the week when Congress would force itself to resolve the dispute over the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order, which President Trump announced in September he would revoke on March 5, giving Congress a six-month window to resolve the issue.

But now, amid legislative and judicial gridlock, lawmakers and the media have moved on to other topics. First, the Senate failed two weeks ago to approve any compromise. Then, the Supreme Court declared it would not wade into the legal challenges to the DACA program until it plays out in lower federal court rulings — a legal process with no obvious end date in sight.

“We would be well advised to continue our work on it, but it seems to me that a lot of the air is out of the balloon here in the Capitol, and people don’t sense its urgency,” said Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), the Republican whip who had been leading bipartisan talks.

Cornyn’s lead negotiating partner, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the Democratic whip, has declared helping the “dreamers,” as the immigrants who were brought here illegally by their parents are known, an urgent, moral mandate. But even he understands why the issue has fallen off the radar.

“Along comes this tragedy, in the high school in Parkland, Florida, and the response of the young people and the national response of the subject, it blows away all other conversations about DACA and the Dream Act, North Korean nuclear threats,” Durbin said.

He and Cornyn have not held any serious immigration talks in weeks, he said — and he added that the same is true for a separate bipartisan group of centrist senators. And none are on tap.

“We talk but at this point we don’t have a plan,” he said.

The forgotten Dreamers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/power...=.0df5fcdbd674

BeeHive · 03-01-2018, 11:54 AM

At least we can renew. It could be a lot worse.

Copper · 03-01-2018, 11:57 AM

Who are we kidding? Even with a deadline they still wouldn’t have done anything to fix the issue.

Luckily for us we can still renew or else the situation would have been a lot worse.

Michcio07 · 03-01-2018, 12:06 PM

This is what courts did... delayed it for congress so they don't have to deal with this shit

BeansDreamtoo21 · 03-01-2018, 12:06 PM

It is obvious democrats asked the judge to bring back daca so the urgency could disappear. Well played it actually worked.

NotADreamerPerSe · 03-01-2018, 12:09 PM

DACA forever...Next time we are in the same spot they're gonna do the same. No one wants to deport Dreamers just cause it would look bad, but no one wants to solve the problem either.

BeansDreamtoo21 · 03-01-2018, 12:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michcio07

This is what courts did... delayed it for congress so they don't have to deal with this shit

Hopefully trump just ask for his stupid wall for dreamers so democrats dont have any excuses for inaction since they already agreed to it.

gely_velazquez · 03-01-2018, 12:24 PM

It is up to us to continue putting the pressure on Congress. Every time a DACA recipient gets arrested for some bullshit reason, anytime we get harassed because of our status anytime our our way of life is put in jeopardy because of the legal limbo we find ourselves in, we need to let them know. Write them, call them, visit them! The courts have given us the opportunity to renew but it doesn’t change the fact that DACA is not law and we are subject to deportation at anytime because we are still here illegally.

jorgeag92 · 03-01-2018, 12:49 PM

Meanwhile I will keep swiping in Tinder

Swim19 · 03-01-2018, 12:53 PM

We will never know if something would have passed if the courts had not intervened.

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With no more deadline, Congress has stopped talking about immigration