A 1,300-page spending bill released by Senate Republicans Monday night contains provisions to restrict asylum and other hard-line immigration changes that make it unlikely to generate bipartisan support.
Democrats already were poised to reject President Donald Trump’s proposal to pass his $5.7 billion funding request for a border wall in exchange for temporary protections for some Dreamers brought to the United States as children. But hawkish measures embedded in the Republican spending bill will give Democrats even more reason to spurn the legislation.
“This is a Stephen Miller special,” Kerri Talbot, a director with the D.C.-based Immigration Hub, told reporters Tuesday. “It’s a Trojan horse with many extreme immigration proposals included.”
The bill doesn’t appear likely to end a partial shutdown of the federal government that stretched into its 32nd day Tuesday.
One policy change in the bill would bar Central American minors from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, except under certain circumstances. Instead, children from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala would be required to apply from their home countries.
Furthermore, the bill would toughen the overall standard for asylum for children from those countries. The secretary of Homeland Security would need to consider an asylum grant for those minors to be “in the national interest,” a hurdle that would be heaped on top of existing requirements.
The depth of restrictionist policy changes in the bill drew immediate fire from pro-migrant advocates.
Philip Wolgin, managing director of the immigration program at the liberal Center for American Progress, joined a chorus of advocates who ripped the legislation.
“Hard to see this as anything but bad faith,” Wolgin tweeted. He added that Senate Republicans could have produced a bill with a narrow immigration trade off — border money in exchange for protections for certain undocumented immigrants. Instead, the legislation contained “pages of new restrictions.”
The White House said over the weekend that Trump would support a compromise that would provide three-year provisional protections for immigrants covered by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. The president moved to phase out the program in September 2017, but federal courts have halted the termination.
Orders from the Supreme Court on Tuesday didn’t mention the DACA cases, despite a Justice Department request that they be added to the court’s calendar for argument in April.
The administration also floated protections for certain people covered by “temporary protected status.” The humanitarian program offers work permits and deportation relief to roughly 400,000 people, but the Trump administration has sought to largely wind down enrollment.
The administration has moved to end the status for people from six countries covered by TPS. The Republican bill provides temporary protections to TPS recipients from El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti and Nicaragua — who make up the bulk of enrollees — but leaves out Nepal and Sudan.
The legislation also could block undocumented immigrants from obtaining TPS in the future. The measure includes language that would require applicants for the status to be “lawfully present” in the U.S.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine
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Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/22/republican-spending-bill-asylum-restrictions-1103837
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The Article Was Written/Published By: thesson@politico.com (Ted Hesson)
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