Congress unlikely to pass immigration reform border separation bill

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President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a campaign rally at Scheels Arena on June 27, 2018 in Fargo, North Dakota. President Trump held a campaign style ‘Make America Great Again’ rally in Fargo, North Dakota with thousands in attendance. 

The latest in a yearslong series of immigration reform efforts crashed in Congress this week, leaving bleak prospects for passing legislation in the months before November’s midterm elections.

Lawmakers for more than a decade have struggled to resolve the thorniest policy issue in Washington. The stakes when House Republican legislation failed spectacularly Wednesday appeared particularly high: The Trump administration faces nationwide backlash over the crisis created by its policy of separating migrant children from parents at U.S. borders.

For years, Congress has pushed for some form of immigration reform. The proposals have varied, and come under both Republican and Democratic control of Capitol Hill and the White House. Many bills in recent years have aimed to tighten border security measures while providing a path to legal status or citizenship for certain undocumented immigrants.

Though Congress has come close to passing some type of immigration reform, it has repeatedly failed to resolve one of the country’s most intractable debates. Now, with a combative Congress and an unpredictable president who has used hard-line immigration goals as a negotiating tactic, lawmakers appear as far as ever from passing immigration reform.

Congress could consider delaying on acting now in hopes of passing “a more comprehensive immigration reform scheme in some imagined future,” said Geoffrey Hoffman, director of the University of Houston Law Center’s Immigration Clinic. But he said, “The argument against the danger of piecemeal reform should not overshadow the necessity of resolving these issues.”

“A legislative fix could protect people with DACA, asylum seekers and other such as those separated from their family members now,” Hoffman added.

Efforts to pass immigration legislation have crumbled several times already this year. The setbacks extend a long string of failures to approve immigration reform that lawmakers will have a difficult time ending.

Congress has tried to codify protections for up to 1.2 million young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children and aimed to pass increased funding for border security. Every attempt during the Trump administration — which came after the president tried to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy , or DACA, shielding the immigrants known as “Dreamers” — has fallen short.

This week, the Republican bill crashed when GOP members in part could not agree on whether they wanted to offer a path to citizenship for those young immigrants. The bill came about after House Republicans negotiated to divert an effort from some members to vote on a wider range of measures. All Democrats opposed the legislation that failed Wednesday, as it met President Donald Trump’s demands for funding his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and limiting legal immigration.