“I don’t see a way to achieve that,” Durbin, the Senate majority leader, told CNN when asked about the path to citizenship. “I want to. I think we are much more likely to deal with discrete elements.”
Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, indicated that Congress is more likely to pass specific parts of immigration policy, rather than a comprehensive bill that advocates have been trying to enact for more than a decade. Durbin pointed to House Mayor Nancy Pelosi’s decision to move this week into two specific parts – a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, known as Dreamers, as well as legal protections for rural workers – as a clear indication of where this Congress is going.
“I think President Pelosi has found that she has no support for a comprehensive project in the House,” said Durbin. “And it indicates where it is in the Senate as well.”
Durbin said he believed the Senate Judiciary Committee would not act on the legislation until April.
Once the two bills are passed in the House, Durbin said, “I have to sit down with my colleagues to see if there is any bipartisan consensus to propose these two as starting points.”
However, Pelosi still wants to present a comprehensive bill – although he has little chance in the Senate. And in a clear sign of the challenges Democrats face, Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior member of the Republican Party on the Senate Judiciary Committee who helped draft a bipartisan immigration agreement passed by the Senate in 2013, says that now is not the time to do so, given the situation at the border.
“We are not going to make a comprehensive immigration bill,” Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, told CNN. “I just don’t see the politics of that. It is very out of control.”
Graham, who used to be a friend of Biden’s, but closely allied with former President Donald Trump, said Biden had not called him since taking office. Asked why he hasn’t spoken to the president yet, Graham said, “He’s a busy man. Don’t be in a hurry.”
Others, like Senator Joe Manchin, caught Biden’s attention. Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who supported the 2013 bill, says he would do it again. But he also said the situation on the border was a “crisis”, going beyond the White House, and said he would wait to be informed before assessing the government’s response.
“Whatever the message sent – it was certainly misinterpreted,” said Manchin. “It is a crisis – oh, it is a crisis.”
Under Trump’s administration, border authorities turned down migrants, including children, after putting in place a pandemic-related public health order. Although the Biden government is still relying heavily on this policy for adults and families, the government has taken the position that it will allow children to arrive alone in the United States, resulting in more children in federal custody.
Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn said on Monday that the crisis on the southern border is making it difficult to find a bipartisan consensus in Congress on necessary changes to immigration laws, including passing legislation to help those who are beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“I am officially saying that I would like to find a permanent solution for DACA recipients,” Cornyn told reporters. “The problem is that every time we try to face the Democrats halfway, they move the posts.”
He pointed to the situation at the border now.
“Unless there is some way to bring some control and order into this situation, I think it makes it very difficult to do other things on a bipartisan basis,” said Cornyn. “This is one of the victims of the failure to think ahead. If you are going to reverse Trump’s policies, what is your plan? Well, they didn’t have a plan. Aside from saying, ‘don’t come now’ when all the other signs are, you know, ‘come in. If you can get here, you will stay. “
“It is a big problem,” he added.
This story has been updated with additional reports.
CNN’s Ted Barrett and Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.