Here’s a key stat that starts to explain the politics behind the immigration debate: Democrat-held districts in the US House of Representatives tend to have more recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program living in them than Republican-held districts.
On average, Democratic districts have nearly double the number of DACA recipients that Republican districts have: 2,469 in blue districts vs.1,391 in red ones, according to a new CNN analysis of data from the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration at University of Southern California Dornsife and the Cook Political Report.
The more Democratic and more Republican each district leans, the more — or fewer, respectively — DACA recipients these districts tend to have. One more way to look at this: A broad 41 of the top 50 congressional districts with the most DACA recipients are represented by Democrats — and 38 of the bottom 50 are represented by Republicans.
That Democratic members of the House are more likely to represent high populations of DACA recipients than Republicans are could matter as lawmakers grapple with a way to give those recipients legal status to stay in the country.
The DACA program was enacted under former President Barack Obama as a way to bring the children of undocumented immigrants out of the shadows. But President Donald Trump ended the program in September of 2017, giving Congress until March to pass legislation to address the needs of these people, many of whom have lived nearly their entire lives in the US.
Trump tried to negotiate a deal with bipartisan leaders in Congress on Tuesday during a lengthy, televised meeting to avert a government shutdown next week.
Both parties and the White House have drawn lines in the sand over immigration policy — with some Democrats threatening to withhold their votes on a government funding bill if Republicans won’t OK a solution for DACA recipients who are under threat of losing their legal status.
Republicans, however, don’t want to pass a clean DACA bill without funding to increase border security — and, for the White House, a border wall.