Senate GOP unveils omnibus bill to fund wall, reopen government The 1,301-page draft bill includes parts outlined by Trump in his Saturday speech Jennifer Shutt
http://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/senate-gop-unveils-omnibus-bill-fund-wall-reopen-government
Senate Republicans have released a $354.5 billion fiscal 2019 spending package that includes $5.7 billion for border wall construction as well as temporary relief for enrollees in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and immigrants receiving Temporary Protected Status.
The 1,301-page draft bill was released Monday night, and it includes parts outlined by President Donald Trump in his Saturday speech. It is expected to receive a vote in the Senate this week.
Democrats have already rejected the proposal, on grounds that the president should first sign stopgap funding to reopen the nine Cabinet departments that have been closed for the past month. They also oppose the three-year extensions of legal status for the roughly 1 million DACA and TPS recipients, which they argue ought to be permanent.
The measure also includes a three-year provision that would allow unaccompanied minors from Central American countries to apply for asylum, with the requirement that they apply while still in their home country. It would limit the number of minors who can apply for asylum to 50,000 annually. Of those applying, it would limit the number that can be approved each year to 15,000.
Additionally, asylum would have to be deemed “in the national interest,” and anyone previously granted asylum whose status was eliminated before receiving a green card would be permanently banned from the country. The provisions were already drawing the ire of immigration advocates on Twitter late Monday.
“This bill would be one of the single-biggest dismantling of America’s systems of humanitarian protections ever,” wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a policy analyst at the American Immigration Council.
The lack of bipartisan support for the proposal virtually ensures that the partial government shutdown, which began on Dec. 22, will continue, as the 800,000 federal employees impacted by the funding lapse inch closer to missing yet another paycheck on Jan. 25. But the White House and GOP leaders are attempting to force a negotiation with Democrats, who have not yet offered their vision of what a border security package should look like.
“The President has proposed a serious compromise to end this shutdown,” Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard C. Shelby said in a statement announcing the package. “It would not only fund the government and secure the border, but also provide immigration reforms the Democrats have long supported.”
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