On Wednesday, House Republicans made one last attempt to legislate a handful of immigration issues that many of them agree need to be solved: the separating of families at the border, what to do with hundreds of thousands of people brought to this country illegally as children (or "dreamers"), and how and whether to fund building President Trump's wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
But that vote failed by even more votes than members of Congress were expecting. And there goes what is likely Republicans' last attempt, at least for this year and possibly for the foreseeable future, to do anything broad to reform immigration.
"I find it hard to believe there's much of an opportunity for a bigger deal between now and the election at this point," Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said after the vote.
Here's why immigration is so hard for the Republican Party to compromise on and why, after Wednesday, Republicans in Congress probably will have no choice but to throw in the towel on this issue.
1. The hard right won't vote for anything that gives the undocumented a pathway to citizenship
Any attempt to give someone who came here illegally a legal status is a nonstarter for an unbending faction of the far right. That position has hardened into stone over the past quarter-century or so, ever since Republicans started feeling like the amnesty President Ronald Reagan granted to nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants went too far.
"No," said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) when asked if there was anyway he'd support a bill that provided a path to citizenship for dreamers. "What is all this about amnesty for dreamers? We need to secure the border, we need to build a wall."
"They see it as: Amnesty will just encourage more illegal immigrants to come," said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy expert with the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, explaining the King wing of the party. "So they see it as a cycle they are on the losing end of."
But one Republican's red line on immigration is another Republican's must-have.
2. Moderates tried to compromise to protect dreamers, but that doesn't seem to be enough
The whole reason House Republicans are voting on immigration right now is that some two dozen moderates led an uprising in the House to force a vote on protecting dreamers. Lawmakers in heavily Hispanic districts in California, Florida and Colorado are worried about facing voters in November with the reality that dreamers could be deported under a Republican-controlled Washington.
House GOP leaders were just as worried that a vote to protect dreamers would be viewed as a capitulation to Democrats in an election year. So leaders merged conservative demands (cutting legal immigration, like ending a visa lottery system and curbing family migration) with moderate demands to provide a path to citizenship for dreamers. That's the foundation of the bill the House voted on Wednesday.
Just agreeing to allow a vote on this was a major concession on moderates' part. Until the past few weeks, cutting legal immigration was considered a far-right demand way out of the mainstream of the Republican Party. It's one reason no Democrats supported this bill.
But even that far-right compromise still couldn't bring enough conservatives on board to pass. At this point, it's not clear what kind of compromise would agree with a majority of Republicans. After the vote, Republican members of Congress sounded stuck on what to do next.
"Some people can't get to yes no matter what we do," Cole said, "and others are just afraid of the issue."
Speaking of ...
3. House leadership is wary of dealing with immigration in an election year — or ever
Republican leaders have reached the conclusion that immigration is more often than not a no-win electoral situation for them.
After the party lost the 2012 presidential election, its leaders devised a plan to reach out to Hispanic voters through friendlier immigration policies. But in that same time frame, Republican leaders have also watched their party's most loyal voters move to the right on immigration.
"The base was never with party leadership on the issue," said GOP consultant Doug Heye. "Even after the 2012 elections, when the conventional wisdom was that Republicans needed to do something on immigration if they ever hoped to win again, the base didn't move."
That's why former House speaker John A. Boehner put off even voting on a comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate in President Barack Obama's second term. And it's why House Republican leaders now, after giving what they think is their best shot to find an immigration compromise, don't want to touch it again before November.
Immigration, Republican leaders have concluded, is just too toxic for Republicans to deal with if they don't absolutely have to.
"It's just too much heavy lifting," said Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the author of a conservative bill who had tried to bring more conservatives onto Wednesday's compromise on why he doesn't think there will be a broad immigration bill voted on anytime this year.
But Republicans say there may still be a vote in the House to prevent family separations at the border, a Trump policy that is unpopular with two-thirds of Americans.
4. Trump
Trump has exacerbated the Republican Party's move to the right on immigration. Since Day One of his presidential campaign, he's leaned heavily on racially charged rhetoric that taps into some Americans' fears that immigrants from Central America and Mexico are coming to the U.S. to steal jobs and bring violence.
On policy, he's injected even more chaos into an immigration system that most politicians already thought was broken. He ended the Obama-era protections for dreamers. He's forcing Congress to find billions to pay for a border wall that most members previously thought was a terrible idea. He implemented a policy to start separating families at the border. And every issue created by his actions, he's demanded Congress resolve.
When Congress has tried — the House bill meets many of Trump's demands, for example — Trump has seemed indifferent and even hostile to the legislation. It's almost as if he doesn't want an immigration deal and would prefer to live with the chaos.
"This bill to me was the closest to what the president actually believes," Cole said after the vote.
In sum: A conservative no-amnesty policy crystallized by decades of opposition. Moderates who fear losing their jobs if they don't give some undocumented immigrants citizenship. And a president who seems just fine with the way things are. Those are all reasons the Republican Party is almost certainly done dealing with immigration after Wednesday.
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