Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Chris Coons (D-DE) are planning to introduce bipartisan legislation this week that would include a path to citizenship for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but stops short of offering any funding for President Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
The proposal would provide eventual legal status for young immigrants who have lived in the U.S. since Dec. 31, 2013. It would also direct the Department of Homeland Security to conduct a study of what border security measures need to be taken, with the goal of having a comprehensive strategy in place by 2020. It would also provide funding for improved coordination between border patrol agents and local police, but no funding for a physical wall, according to the Journal.
The narrow immigration bill is designed to end the impasse over a two-year budget deal. The topic of immigration was thrown into spending bill debates after Trump announced last year that he was ending the DACA program, which protects undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Former President Obama first implemented the DACA program.
To end the government shutdown last month, Congress passed a short-term spending bill that’s set to expire again on Friday. Democrats agreed to the short-term bill in exchange for a promise from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to Democrats that he would bring an immigration bill to the Senate floor by Feb. 8.
The McCain-Coons proposal will likely prompt little enthusiasm from the White House. Trump’s plan, unveiled last month, provides a path to citizenship for about 1.8 undocumented immigrants, but also asks Congress for $25 billion for the border wall and cuts back on legal lottery and family-based immigration systems.
This is a good faith effort to resolve the problem. Trump will only support bad faith efforts so this, like the Graham Durbin effort, is quite likely to fail. Will McConnell keep his promise to allow a vote on it? Not holding my breath.
We’re asked to stand for the anthem, to acknowledge what a great country this is:
On a recent Wednesday morning, Syed Ahmed Jamal was getting ready to take his daughter to school when he was stopped outside his home in Lawrence, Kan.
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement were on his front lawn. Before Jamal, 55, could say goodbye to his wife and three children, the ICE agents detained him and led him away in handcuffs.
The arrest of a “beloved Lawrence family man, scientist and community leader” came as a shock to Jamal’s friends and neighbors in the Kansas City area, where he has lived since arriving in the United States on a student visa from Bangladesh more than 30 years ago. He would go on to also attain graduate degrees in molecular biosciences and pharmaceutical engineering, then settle in Lawrence to raise a family.
Along the way, he switched from student visas to an H-1B visa for highly skilled workers, then back to a student visa when he enrolled in a doctoral program, his family said. At the time of his arrest, Jamal was on a temporary work permit, teaching chemistry as an adjunct professor at Park University in Kansas City and conducting research at various local hospitals.
In a statement to The Washington Post, an ICE official said the agency “continues to focus its enforcement resources on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security.” Asked whether Jamal had done anything that would have placed him in this category, the official said that, “as ICE Acting Director Thomas Homan has made clear, ICE does not exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”
and this will be repeated time and time again and we must bring every case like this forward through social media or whatever means possible .
Put a face on the stupidity and cruelty
Good faith is for Chumps and Democrats .
When has Mitch ever and I mean EVER acted in good faith
This is one of the most nauseating things I have read recently.
I keep thinking I must have reached a point where nothing about this Maladministration can surprise, shock or appall me. Then there comes something like this. Shame on us, shame on the US.