House rejects Republican immigration bill, ignoring Trump

WASHINGTON — Despite tweaking their immigration bill, House GOP leaders failed to bridge the gap between conservatives and moderates and watched the legislation die Wednesday for lack of unity on a divisive issue just months before the midterm elections.

The House voted 301-121 against the bill despite last-minute pleading by President Donald Trump for Republicans to pass the legislation to make Democrats look soft on border security and crime.

“I told them a few hours ago, I said, look pass something, or come back to something that would be a variation, but get something you want,” Trump told reporters after Republicans rejected their bill.

The Nevada congressional delegation split along party lines, with Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., voting for the bill and Democratic Reps. Dina Titus, Jacky Rosen and Ruben Kihuen voting against it.

Amodei has been critical of GOP leadership for failing to address immigration reform and offer members an opportunity to vote on proposals.

Amodei said that after 31 years of congressional inaction, the bill at least made improvements over the status quo.

“I will always choose policy reforms that will improve border security, reprioritize the allocation of immigrant visas, and prevent future illegal immigration over continued inaction,” he said.

Rosen said the legislation was a partisan bill that slashed legal immigration in ways “that will hurt Nevada’s economy, and it doesn’t adequately address the humanitarian crisis at the border.”

Titus said the lopsided loss dealt by GOP lawmakers to their own bill “just shows how inept and unserious the Republican Party is at finding solutions to end their child separation policy and protect our DREAMers.”

Money for a border wall

Conservative Republicans walked away from the brokered GOP bill that would have provided $25 billion for a border wall and cuts in legal immigration in exchange for citizenship for undocumented immigrant youth and continuation of a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Republicans also included language to streamline adjudication of asylum requests at the Southwest border and measures to prevent family separations following the outcry of recent weeks over Trump’s “zero tolerance” enforcement policy on illegal immigration.

It was not enough to save the legislation, which was pulled from the floor twice last week, only to go down in flames Wednesday.

No Democrat supported the bill.

In fact, the House GOP legislation was designed to block a bipartisan effort between Democrats and moderate Republicans who threatened to force GOP leadership to call a vote on bipartisan legislation through a little-used parliamentary tool known as a discharge petition.

After agreeing to hold votes on GOP immigration legislation, Republicans leaders were then confounded by Trump, who sent shifting messages.

After compelling Congress to provide a legislative fix to the family separations to quell international condemnation, the president swiveled and tweeted that Republicans should drop efforts to pass a bill because it lacked the votes by Democrats in the Senate.

He flipped again on Wednesday, tweeting that the House should approve the bill: “PASSAGE WILL SHOW THAT WE WANT STRONG BORDERS & SECURITY WHILE THE DEMS WANT OPEN BORDERS = CRIME. WIN!”

“I think that’s going to be a great election point for us,” Trump told reporters after the vote.

Democrats blame Trump

Democrats have been openly critical of the president, who they say set off the firestorm and family separations with the zero tolerance policy in April.

“The president created this problem,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “The quickest way to solve it is administratively.”

Democrats also oppose Trump’s proposed border wall and his decision to end the Obama-era DACA program last September.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans were working on their own narrow bill to address just family separations through adjudication of cases to keep families together.

Even though Trump signed an executive order last week to stop the separations, it violated a long-standing court ruling that immigrant children cannot be held beyond 20 days. Republicans said the Trump order reversing earlier policy was under court review.

And although GOP senators have sought a quick solution to the humanitarian crisis created at the border, a negotiating team headed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, indicated Wednesday that it was unlikely a bill would be ready this week.

A House GOP aide said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., was working with the Trump administration to craft a narrow bill to address the separations of families. The aide said the bill would likely be offered to members after the House and Senate return from a Fourth of July recess.

In the House, the intraparty battle over the immigration bill fell along ideological lines as some conservatives could not vote for earned citizenship for immigrants brought into this country illegally. They called the citizenship plan, which required background checks, military service or education and a decade’s long wait, an “amnesty.”

Republican hardliners also worried that codifying the Obama-era DACA program would upset their base voters.

Moderates were equally as opposed to the bill’s reduction in family-based legal immigration, termed “chain migration” by conservatives, the burden for DREAMer youth to receive DACA protections for deportation and spending $25 billion on a wall along the Southwest border.

Contact Gary Martin at gmartin@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7390. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter.