DECEMBER 20, 2017 / 6:54 AM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO

'Dreamer' bill to be brought to Senate floor in January: senator

Reuters Staff

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Flake on Wednesday said that a bipartisan immigration bill addressing the so-called Dreamers, young adults who were brought to the United States as children, would be debated on the Senate floor in January.

“Bipartisan #DACA bill will be on the Senate floor in January,” Flake wrote in a post on Twitter. President Donald Trump in September rescinded a program protecting the young adults from deportation but had asked Congress to devise a more permanent solution.

Flake said in an emailed statement that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised to bring such a bill to the full Senate next month.

Aides to McConnell were not immediately available for comment.

A bipartisan group of senators led by Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican Lindsey Graham have been holding private negotiations over how many Dreamers would be covered by legislation giving them temporary legal status and whether they would ultimately be allowed to apply for U.S. citizenship.

The negotiations have been complicated by Republican demands that increased border security be included in any legislation.

Republicans also have been clamoring for more immigration enforcement throughout the United States. Democrats have been opposed to that as part of a Dreamer measure, saying it is a way for the Trump administration to step up its deportations of undocumented relatives of Dreamers, thus breaking up families currently in the United States.

 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...KBN1EE1V4?il=0