Key Democrats and Republicans are reviving immigration reform talks. Advocates see hope for action before pro-Trump hardliners like Jim Jordan take charge if they win the midterms.

• Key Senate Democrats and Republicans are reviving immigration reform talks ahead of the midterms.
• Leaders in both parties said it’s possible to get a bill passed before the November elections.
• Advocates see a sense of urgency to beat a potential change in power that could usher in hardliners.

The fact that Senate leaders on both sides of the aisle are even talking about moving an immigration reform bill just months before the midterm elections is cause enough for celebration, advocacy groups tracking the latest negotiations say. 

Members of the Alliance for a New Immigration Consensus, however, say they are most excited about what they describe as the collective sense of urgency driving the revived negotiations. 

Advocates told Insider that Senate Republicans likely understand that the chances of making positive gains on immigration will plummet if Donald Trump devotees were to gain power next year. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, for instance, has stoked fears that terrorists are creeping into the country (which the Customs and Border Patrol refuted), while House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jim Jordan’s top priority is completing Trump’s easily breached border wall. Should Republicans win in the midterms, such anti-immigration hardliners would be in charge.

“That means you have Speaker McCarthy and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, neither of whom are going to allow any sort of constructive immigration proposal to leave the House,” Ali Noorani, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, said of the obstacles that await if Senate dealmakers don’t “figure out what solutions can be achieved now.” 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois, and the top Republican on the panel, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, both said they’re trying to do just that. 

“Staff is gathering the measures that are currently bipartisan. We’re going to put them on the table and see if we can build a package that gets 60 votes,” Durbin told Insider at the US Capitol. 

Cornyn added that this latest effort would be more constrained than other wider-reaching attempts. “Nobody is suggesting that we do anything like was attempted before, a comprehensive bill,” Cornyn said, adding, ” I just don’t think that’s feasible.”

Democrats repeatedly tried to weave a path to citizenship for millions of longstanding migrants in last year’s budget reconciliation bill but were blocked at every turn by procedural objections raised by the Senate parliamentarian. 

House Republicans need to flip just a handful of seats to wrest the speaker’s gavel from Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell needs just a single pickup to again set the agenda in the bitterly divided chamber. 

‘A matter of will’

When asked by Insider, Durbin balked at naming specific proposals in the mix for the scaled-back immigration bundle. “We’re not at that stage yet,” the Senate majority whip and co-author of the perennial Dream Act said. 

One potential starting point Durbin offered was a Cornyn-backed bill providing emergency visas to medical personnel. “We’ll see where we go from there,” Durbin said. 

Cornyn also floated the possibility of prioritizing protections for current recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — which the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute ballparked at 600,000-plus participants in December 2021 — versus the millions of DACA-eligible individuals who have sought to stay stateside since the Obama administration rolled out the civic roadmap. 

“I’ve always been sympathetic to giving them some certainty,” Cornyn said of the current DACA crowd, adding, “They’ve been in litigation for 10 years.”

Cornyn said he’s looped in GOP Judiciary colleague Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina about the staff-level discussions and suspects that Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, who chairs the Judiciary panel’s immigration subcommittee, is also intimately involved. 

Cobbling together a mutually agreeable bundle before the November election is doable, according to Cornyn. “I think it’s just a matter of will,” he said. 

The can-do attitude on the Hill has inspired confidence in others that a last-ditch deal is within reach. “We think that it is similar to criminal justice reform,” Jorge Lima, senior vice president of policy at Americans for Prosperity, said of the gradual approach that got the bipartisan First Step Act inked into law during the Trump administration. 

Long overdue

Lima said the dozens of immigration alliance members have polling data that shows overwhelming support for a three-pronged package combining the Durbin-led Dream Act, the House-passed Farm Workforce Modernization Act, and the Bipartisan Border Solutions Act developed by Cornyn, Tillis, and Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire. 

“By no means would just those three things solve everything we need solved on immigration,” Lima said of the opening gambit. But securing something is preferable to accomplishing nothing. 

“The history on this issue has always shown that you try to take something that does everything, and that’s when the opposition can really break off and fragment folks,” Lima said of the inherent danger of waiting. 

“If Congress wants to add more to that, I think we would be excited. Because, again, this is only seen as a first step,” Lima told Insider. “But we definitely think it’s a very positive and impactful first step — if they can get it done.” 

Noorani said he’s hopeful that Republicans who genuinely “want solutions on immigration” will take this opportunity to act rather than allowing anti-amnesty hardliners to dictate harsher terms down the road.  He cited Sens. Cornyn, Tillis, Dream Act co-sponsor Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska as lawmakers who’ve participated in immigration talks to various degrees in recent years.  

“There’s a way to get to 10 Republican senators,” Noorani said. “The trick will be to do that while holding on to the Democrats.”