WASHINGTON — A quiz: If a bipartisan majority of House members wants votes on a subject that gets sky-high public support, why do they seem likely to fail? And why are they pushing it regardless?
Here’s some help: It’s the politically loaded issue of helping “Dreamer” immigrants. And it’s an election year.
Around 50 Republicans and nearly all 193 Democrats have rallied behind an effort to hold those votes, a drive led by a GOP lawmaker from a central California district where around four in 10 residents are Hispanic. There would be four alternatives: A conservative bill restricting legal immigration, a liberal one helping Dreamers achieve citizenship, any bill of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s choosing and a bipartisan compromise.
“The American public is demanding a vote,” the ringleader, Rep. Jeff Denham, said Wednesday, a nod to polls showing 80 percent support for helping Dreamers. “And we’re demanding it, too.”
Ryan, who’s already said he opposes the proposal, is unlikely to allow the votes to even happen, citing a desire to push only legislation President Donald Trump would sign. Facing prospects of losing control of the House, GOP leaders have little interest in highlighting party division.
The fight demonstrates some Republicans’ persistent discomfort with Trump’s hard-line immigration stance and the party that has embraced it. With high-level, bipartisan talks about legislation for the “Dreamers” dead, some Republicans are now focused on protecting themselves from political fallout still to come.
The push for a new round of votes is popular in the districts of Denham and his GOP supporters, many of whom represent areas with high Hispanic populations, industries that rely heavily on immigrants like agriculture or moderate suburban voters. Many of them believe a congressional stalemate over immigrants will cost them in November, a sentiment happily shared by Democrats who broadly back a fix for the immigrants whose protection from deportation under an Obama-era program has expired.
If the roll calls were held, many believe the winner would be the bipartisan plan, which would help many young Dreamers stay in the U.S. permanently but not offer them citizenship. It would strengthen border security but provide none of the $25 billion President Donald Trump has wanted to build his border wall with Mexico.
That compromise, by Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas, and Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., is backed by at least 30 Republicans with moderate views on immigration and most Democrats. But it’s not a preferred outcome for the GOP.
Helping immigrants here illegally and defying Trump would alienate the party’s staunch conservative voters, threatening turnout, contributions and campaign volunteers. And with fewer than one in four House Republicans backing Denham’s effort, leaders maneuvering to succeed the retiring Ryan have little interest in incensing the large numbers of GOP lawmakers who, like Trump, back a restrictive stance on the issue.
“It resends power back to Nancy Pelosi,” Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C. said of Denham’s plan.
