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Senate rejects immigration plans, leaving fate of 'Dreamers' uncertain

The Senate summarily blocked three measures Thursday — including one backed by President Donald Trump — to resolve the fate of the “Dreamers,” leaving hundreds of thousands of them facing an uncertain future.

The lack of consensus left in question whether any solution on the Dreamers can be reached. In a rebuke to the president, senators voted 39-60 against the White House-backed bill, which would have committed $25 billion for a wall along the border with Mexico, placed strict limits on legal immigration, ended the diversity visa lottery and offered 1.8 million Dreamers an eventual path to citizenship.

The rejection was bipartisan: Democrats refused its get-tough approach to legal immigration, while many conservative Republicans derided it as amnesty.

Before the vote on Trump’s plan, senators rejected two bipartisan measures, including one written by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Chris Coons, D-Del., and another drafted by a bipartisan group of centrists calling themselves the Common Sense Coalition.

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What will happen now is unclear. An estimated 690,000 young immigrants living in the country illegally have been protected from deportation by an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Another 1.1 million would be eligible.

But Trump has rescinded the program, which offers temporary, renewable work permits. It expires March 5.

The White House had worked vigorously to oppose the centrist bill, which the Department of Homeland Security labeled “a mass amnesty for over 10 million illegal aliens.” Senators of both parties said afterward that the Trump administration was instrumental in its defeat.

“I don’t think the president helped very much, but the bottom line is the demagogues won again on the left and the right,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a key sponsor of the Senate measure.

Some Dreamers, many of whom have known no country other than the United States, are hopeful that the judicial system will protect them. Two federal courts have issued injunctions ordering the Trump administration to keep DACA in place for those receiving its protections, but the Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to intervene and overturn lower court rulings.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MICHAEL D. SHEAR © 2018 The New York Times

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