Leaders in the Republican Party are trying to find methods to get around the current gridlock over the issue of immigration reform, allowing their conservative members to express their fury at President Obama while avoiding cutting off funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
One option open to the Republican Party is to give the green light to a new bill that would see security beefed up at the border between the United States and Mexico. Another would be to take the president to court in a bid to overturn his recent executive action giving deportation protection to millions of undocumented immigrants, or another short-term funding measure for the Department of Homeland Security could be passed to give the party more time to develop a strategy.
The main priority for top Republicans is to reach a compromise that maintains the funding for the DHS without making the party’s conservative base feel that the party has caved in to pressure from the White House. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas is one of the conservatives who want to take a much more aggressive stance, which includes the controversial bill passed by the House of Representatives last week that the president has already threatened to veto.
Democrats and even some Republicans have mocked the bill as being certain to fail; however, conservatives have warned that the Republicans gained power in the Senate by promising to tackle Obama’s executive action on immigration and that the party needs to honor this commitment.