The Republican compromise immigration bill was defeated in the House on Wednesday in a vote that rebuked the wishes of President Trump and revealed that Republicans will continue to remain deadlocked on the issue.
The bill was supposed to be Republican leaderships’ way to qualm the debate, combining a narrow pathway to citizenship for some illegal immigrants with speedier deportations, as well as new limits on legal immigration and funding for the President’s border wall. Trump called the bill “strong but fair” and gave his stamp of approval just hours before the vote.
However, nearly half of the House Republicans ditched the bill and aligned with democrats to defeat it in a one sided vote of 301-121.
Speaking about the bill’s defeat, Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, said, “This Congress was not elected to pass a sweeping amnesty. Instead of wasting our time granting legal protections to admitted criminals, we should be addressing the border security agenda the American people want.”
The Republican leaders who were pushing conservatives and centrists to write the compromise, will now have to shift their attention to another immigration issue that has received a substantial amount of coverage in the past month: the family separation crisis at the U.S. border.
Republican leadership hopes the party can offer a bill that will keep illegal immigrant parents and their children detained together, instead of separating and outright releasing them. Democrats have pushed for more lenient options and have even proposed banning separations. However that was defeated by a 230-190 vote, with just one Republican defecting to join Democrats. The issue will be up again next month after the House returns from Independence Day vacation.
The vote on the compromise revealed that the House still hasn’t overcome a years-long stalemate that has plunged every attempt to pass a major immigration bill.
Republican leaders have blamed Democrats for refusing to vote for what they see as a reasonable compromise laid out by the president: citizenship rights for over 1 million illegal immigrants, including “Dreamers,” in exchange for major changes to how both the legal and illegal immigration systems will be enforced.
Among those enforcement changes were new limits to chain of family migration, as well as putting an end to the visa lottery that allows 55,000 immigration to enter the country each year. The compromise also included tougher standards for requesting asylum, and pathways to deport juveniles crossing the border more quickly. $23 billion was also included to pay for construction of the border wall.
However, Democrats said the bill still placed too many restrictions on illegal immigrants. The second-ranking House Democrat, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, said, “An overwhelming majority of our people want to see DREAMers given a chance to stay in the country they love and contribute to and have called home nearly their whole lives — and do not support deporting these young people to distant lands they have never known.”
At Mathur Law Offices, we have been protecting the rights of immigrants in Dallas for more than 15 years. If you are currently facing deportation or going through an immigration dispute, you should contact our team of immigration attorneys to schedule your case evaluation today.