US Senate rejects all three immigration bills

As the US Senate rejected three different immigration bills, including the one actively backed by President Donald Trump, new doubts have arisen over the prospect of coming up with a timely legislative fix to protect some 700,000 young illegal immigrants from deportation after the March 5 deadline.

With all the three bills failed to clear even the procedural vote needed to take up the measures for further consideration and final voting, it was not immediately clear how the Senate would proceed next in the matter.

The White House promptly attacked the Democrats and accused them of not being serious about hammering out a deal for ‘Dreamers’. “They filibustered a proposal with an extremely generous path to citizenship because it also contained reforms that secured our border and secured our immigration system,” a White House statement said.

In what was a clear setback for Trump, the Republican-sponsored bill mirroring his immigration framework lost out badly, with at least 12 party senators joining the Democrats in voting against it. While Republicans have a slender majority with 51 members, the Trump-inspired bill got just 39 ‘yes’ votes in favour, with as many as 60 voting against it.

The bill, introduced by senior Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and six others, had proposed a path to citizenship for 1.8 million young immigrants over a 12-year period, a $25 billion allocation for building a border wall and other security measures, scrapping the diversity visa lottery programme and limiting family-based legal immigration in favour of a merit-based system.

 In contrast to the Trump-backed legislation, a bipartisan bill that featured the deal for Dreamers and $25 billion border security measures but rejected the scrapping of visa lottery and curtailment of family-based immigration garnered far more votes (54), but fell short of the 60-vote threshold. A third bill, sponsored by Republican John McCain and Democrat Chris Coons also failed to make the cut, receiving 52 votes.

Amid this setback after four days of debate, it was not clear if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will allow more time for lawmakers to debate the issue on the Senate floor. As Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn put it, “I don’t see it. If we couldn’t get it together this week, I mean, we’ve got other things we have to do, which are pressing.”