Hostility From Trump And House GOP Looms Over Senate Immigration Talks

Negotiations in the Senate on an immigration package that would protect the group of young immigrants known as Dreamers has kicked into high gear, with dozens of Democratic and Republican lawmakers meeting almost daily to attempt to craft a plan before their self-imposed deadline of Feb. 8. But as the senators boast to reporters about their bipartisan bonhomie and progress toward a deal, a fear hangs over the negotiations: that conservatives in the House of Representatives and a mercurial President advised by immigration hardliners will shoot down whatever they manage to produce.

“We’re caught in this vortex where Trump won’t negotiate and Republicans won’t support anything that Trump won’t sign,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told TPM.

The early exposure Thursday night of the White House’s proposed immigration framework only complicates matters. The plan—which Democrats have already declared “dead on arrival”—would offer a pathway to citizenship for nearly 2 million immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children in exchange for deep cuts to legal immigration and tens of billions of dollars for walls on the country’s southern and northern borders.

While most Democrats say they could conceivably stomach the wall money—and have in the past voted for billions in border security funding—they say the visa cuts and abolition of most family-based immigration is a non-starter.

“I don’t have the appetite to completely redo the methodology of how we bring people into this country,” Murphy said. “There is room for for an increased skills assessment, but not at the expense of family reunification.”

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