US House Republicans are taking broad steps to overturn US President Barack Obama’s immigration policies and remove protections for immigrants brought illegally to the country as children.
Votes were set yesterday on legislation worth nearly US$40 billion to finance the US Department of Homeland Security through the rest of the budget year.
Republicans were voting on one amendment to undo executive actions Obama announced in November last year that provided temporary deportation relief to about 4 million immigrants in the country illegally.
Another amendment would delete Obama’s 2012 policy that has granted work permits and stays of deportation to more than 600,000 immigrants who arrived in the US illegally as children.
Republicans say Obama’s moves amounted to an unconstitutional overreach that must be stopped.
The changes Obama announced in November last year especially enraged the Republicans, because they came not long after their party swept the midterm elections, taking control of the US Senate and increasing their majority in the House.
Republicans pledged then to revisit the issue once US Congress was fully under their control.
However, even with Republicans in control of the Senate the bill faces tough chances there, especially because House Republican leaders decided to satisfy demands from conservative members by including a vote to undo the 2012 policy that deals with younger immigrants known as “dreamers.”
The amendment, which is opposed by some of the more moderate Republicans in the House, would ultimately expose those young people to deportation.
Republicans are six votes shy of the 60-vote majority needed to advance most legislation in the Senate, and even some Republicans in the Senate have expressed unease with the House Republicans’ approach, especially given the importance of funding the Department of Homeland Security in light of the Paris terrorist attacks.
Some House Republicans acknowledged that the Senate was likely to reject their approach, perhaps forcing them in the end to pass a Homeland Security funding bill stripped of controversial provisions on immigration.
Homeland Security money expires at the end of next month, so House leaders have left themselves some weeks to reach the end game.
Obama has threatened to veto the House bill and Democrats roundly denounced it, even as immigrant advocates warned Republicans they risked alienating Latino voters who will be crucial to the 2016 presidential election.
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