According to CNN there’s a new bipartisan DACA proposal that 24 Republicans and 24 Democrats are putting forward. The only problem is they say it looks a lot like the Graham/Durbin proposal that’s already been rejected:
CNN – A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House are unveiling Monday their proposal to resolve the immigration standoff in Washington, even as the White House has offered a more conservative plan.
The group of 48 lawmakers, split evenly by party, are calling for their immigration-border security outline to be included in a budget deal that has evaded congressional leadership for months because of the impasse on immigration and other issues.
The Problem Solvers Caucus has worked since last fall to come up with a solution on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protected young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation and which President Donald Trump decided in September to terminate by March 5.
The Problem Solvers proposal resembles an offer from a bipartisan Senate group led by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, which was rejected by Trump and has been declared dead in the Senate by GOP leadership.
Here’s the meat of this ‘new’ proposal:
In the deal, qualifying young undocumented immigrants would have a 10- to 12-year pathway to citizenship, provided they have a clean criminal record and have paid taxes.
The border security piece of the deal would appropriate the President’s request for this coming fiscal year: $1.6 billion for physical barriers, such as wall and fencing, and $1.1 billion for technology and other measures. It would also appropriate money for drug screening, border access roads and personnel and authorize a study on adding fees to related activities — like crossing the border — that can then be spent on border security.
To answer the other two “pillars” of what the White House has demanded, ending the diversity lottery and curtailing family migration, the bill would eliminate the diversity visa but create a new merit-based visa for underrepresented countries with education, work and language requirements. Half of the visas would also go initially toward allowing recipients of Temporary Protected Status to stay in the US after the Trump administration ended their protections.
The bill would prevent parents who brought their children illegally to the US from being sponsored for citizenship by those children once they become citizens, but would give them three-year legal work permits to stay in the US without citizenship.
Trump wanted at least $25 billion in a trust for the border and it seems they are offering less than $3 billion. And while they are eliminating the diversity visa, they are still focusing heavily on ‘underrepresented countries’ with their merit-based visas and want to reinstate the protections for those already here under TPS.
I seriously doubt Trump will go for this since he’s already killed Graham/Durbin, but these 48 lawmakers are hoping their numbers will force this to get more traction.