Dick Durbin: Immigration talks make little progress in Congress

Sen. Richard J. Durbin, the chamber’s No. 2 Democratic leader, said Wednesday that immigration talks had made little progress, and he was still pushing a proposal that President Trump rejected for being too light on border security.

Negotiations for an immigration deal that protects illegal immigration “Dreamers” and bolsters border security has bogged down under Democrats’ resistance to a border wall and tighter immigration laws.

“We’re not where we need to be,” Mr. Durbin told The Washington Times.

Still, he said that he expects several immigration bills will be put on the Senate floor next week to see what can clear the 60-vote threshold to advance.

The Illinois Democrat said he continued to push for one of the bills to be the bipartisan proposal he crafted with Sen. Lindsay Graham, South Carolina Republican.

“That’s what I’m working on,” Mr. Durbin said.

The White House has deemed it a “nonstarter.”

The Graham-Durbin bill was rejected by Mr. Trump in the run-up to the Jan. 20 government shutdown over Dreamers, the illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors and will soon lose their Obama-era temporary deportation amnesty.

The bill offered a generous pathway to citizenship for as many as 2 million illegal immigrants but funded only about 10 percent of a border wall and failed to limit family-based chain migration or end the Visa Diversity Lottery.

Mr. Trump has insisted on the framework he put forward that would put 1.8 million Dreamers on a citizenship path, provide $25 billion trust fund for border security that would ensure construction of a border wall, limit family-based chain migration and end the lottery program that randomly doles out 50,000 visas a year.

Mr. Trump said Tuesday that he was willing to shut down the government over border security.

“I would shut it down over this issue,” he said. “Without borders, we don’t have a country.”

Congress is expected to pass a stopgap spending bill before Thursday’s deadline to keep the government open. The immigration bills would then hit the Senate floor next week.