Senators are no closer to striking a deal that would tighten US immigration laws and approve billions of dollars in aid for Ukraine, lawmakers said Monday.
Time is of the essence to strike a deal, with both the House and Senate scheduled to recess for the holiday on Thursday.
However, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who is leading GOP senators in negotiations aimed at tying $61.4 billion in President Biden’s wartime funding for Ukraine with changes to the US asylum system, is skeptical that the two sides can come together on the deal at the end of the week.
“We will not be able to [a deal] by Thursday or Friday this week. We are still working through the text… and there are many areas that are not resolved,” Lankford told reporters Monday, calling it a “disappointing weekend” and accusing the White House of not including him in discussions Biden administration officials are having with Democratic lawmakers.
Senator James Lankford, the Republican chief negotiator, said it was unlikely a deal would be done before the end of this week. ZUMAPRESS.com Republican senators accused Biden of keeping them out of the loop as they negotiated a deal that would approve billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine. AP
The Oklahoma Republican further told NBC News that he was not sure that even an extra week in session would lead to a hammered deal.
“There’s no way to get it done this week,” Lankford said. “The question is will we stay next week or will this actually go into early January to be resolved? That’s a big unknown at this point, and that depends on how the negotiations actually go and how we actually work to get a text that actually works.”
With time ticking down, Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD) said Monday that he expects the White House to be more involved in the discussions, similarly accusing the Biden administration of not being “serious about dealing with this in a real, meaningful, serious way.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled to meet with Biden and House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to secure additional funding for his country before members of Congress skip town for the year-end recess.
“We have a responsibility to [US],” Lankford said whether Zelensky can say anything to Republican lawmakers that will cause them to reject immigration reform and border security demands.
“It means I will go back to my country and say I care about people in other countries, but I don’t care about what is happening in my own country. It’s important that we really do two things at once here,” he added.
Zelensky is expected to meet with lawmakers and President Biden on Tuesday. AFP via Getty Images
Thune said his message to Zelensky was “we want to help but we need the Dems to get serious” about border security.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., the top Democratic Senate negotiator, left the door open to the possibility of a deal being reached Thursday.
“Obviously, we don’t have the benefit of the moment,” Murphy told NBC News. “I have seen strange things happen in the National Assembly. But that sure looks like an uphill climb – but not impossible.”
Biden, 81, asked Congress to approve an additional $106 billion aid package, which includes $61.4 billion in new aid for Ukraine, in October.
The package, which also includes about $44.5 billion in support for Israel, Taiwan and the US southern border, was rejected for the third time by the Senate last week.
Senate Republicans are demanding repairs to America’s “broken asylum process” as a condition for approving the spending request, and hope to attach migrant asylum and parole modifications to the president’s national security addition.
GOP senators are demanding that immigrants be ineligible for asylum if they have transited through at least one country outside their country of origin before arriving in the US or have committed a felony or other serious crime.
Lawmakers also sought to raise the “credible fear of persecution” asylum standard from “highly likely” to “more likely than not” and revive the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy, which allowed US border authorities to turn back migrants to Mexico while their asylum claims play out in the court system.
The GOP proposal also calls for changes to the humanitarian parole system, which the Biden administration has used to resettle more than 200,000 refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine, and hundreds of thousands more from countries including Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti.
Republicans want parole only for immigrants who are not in the country and limited to rare cases.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
