And yet even Republicans who were open to more liberal immigration policies are now closing the door to the approach, while the party trusts President Joe Biden because he did no more to curb the crisis, meaning he has the necessary 60 votes in the having to find evenly distributed room to advance an immigration bill remains a challenging task.
“The world has changed in eight years – dramatically,” said Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican architect of the 2013 Bill, in Florida, who got stuck in the GOP-led House that year.
Asked if he would now support with a comprehensive effort, Rubio said: ‘Not in one big bill, no. You have to do it in pieces. ‘
But doing it in pieces presents a whole range of other problems.
Senior Republicans of the Senate are demanding strict border security regulations and restrictions on asylum seekers to be included in such a proposal. However, if Democrats agree to such an approach, they will certainly provoke setbacks among progressive people – especially in the House.
“It’s going to be very easy to do something if this government wants to control the borders, which they do not want at the moment,” said Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. asked about moving piece-by-piece proposals.
‘I said a long time ago: The right wing wants to load 11 million people and get them out of the country, otherwise they are not going to vote for the bill, and the left wants to be legal, or give everyone citizenship yesterday. , ‘Grassley said. “And you can not get 60 or 70 votes if that’s what you’re dealing with.”
Tear among Democrats
“I think we are much more likely to deal with discrete elements,” Durbin said.
Some Democrats pushed back these comments.
“I do not think that is acceptable,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said Tuesday night when asked how the base would react if Democrats did not push through a plan with a path to citizenship for the 11 million. undocumented immigrants.
Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, a Democrat in New Mexico, added: ‘I do not believe any of us should continue to move forward to seek more support for comprehensive immigration reform … I will not concede to progress do not deal with comprehensive immigration reform. . ”
And even re-elected senators stick to that approach.
“We need to do a profound, comprehensive immigration reform,” said Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat who spoke to Biden about the humanitarian situation at the border. Asked if he saw the situation on the border as a crisis, which the White House did not want to do, the swing-state Democrat said: “Yes. I mean it’s an incredibly challenging situation.”
But some top Democrats seem to align themselves with the White House rhetoric.
“I would not call it a crisis,” Durbin said. “But it’s definitely a challenge.”
Some Democrats are looking at the budget process to boost the party vote on immigration
The chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, did not say whether he would use the conciliation process for immigration legislation – and ultimately the call from the Senate, Chuck Schumer, would depend.
“To reconcile, you have to have every Democrat’s vote. We have not yet had those talks to know if we would vote every Democrat on it,” Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, said.
Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, said that instead of reconciliation, he wants his party to “get back to normal.” “You can not just assume that everyone is against everything just because this place has become so (full) tribal. Someone has to try to put it back in place.”
On Tuesday, Schumer would not rule out the attempt to approve a comprehensive bill and told reporters: “My strongest desire is to implement comprehensive immigration reform.” He added that “we will do everything in our power to explore the area.”
For many Democrats who have been trying for years to draft comprehensive immigration bills, the political reality is that many of their Republican colleagues who were willing to negotiate or vote for a comprehensive immigration reform bill are gone – or unwilling to do so again. to come to the table.
“I think what Sen. Durbin had in mind was trying to put together a number of immigration reforms. It seems like a more realistic way to go,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat. “Republicans have always been afraid of their own shadow when it comes to immigration reform.”
Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, added: “Sometimes you have to start with a modest dual proposal and see what else you can build on it.”
In the House, Democratic leaders plan to schedule votes later this week on two bills aimed at giving recipients under the Deferred Action for Childhood, or DACA, a path to citizenship and expanding the country’s agricultural workers’ program. The bills passed the House in the last congress and are expected to succeed again, but even the bipartisan measure has an uphill climb in the Senate.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and author of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill in 2013, told CNN that this is not the time for legislation to legalize recipients of the DACA program.
“I’m all for looking after the Dreamers, but you do not want to take care of them and at the same time encourage another way to legal immigration, so that the window to do something now does not exist, because it flows up the border needs to be controlled, ”Graham said.
Other Republicans say any attempt to legalize Dreamers or extend farm worker visas should provide with strong border security provisions, which could alienate progressive people to support a final agreement.
“I think there are a number of us who are willing to work on immigration bills, but they need to be very targeted and implement some of the investigative practices we want to see,” said Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa. .
This story was updated on Tuesday with additional details.
CNN’s Sarah Fortinsky and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.