Sen. Gary Peters and Michigan Immigrants React to Budget Deal
“It’s not giving up at all,” says Peters.
On Wednesday, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the U.S. Senate announced they reached a two-year spending deal that would avert a government shutdown.
Both Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer stressed that the plan was truly bipartisan. They say the deal is full of compromise. Neither party loves it, but both can agree on it, they say.
A middle-of-the-road deal.
But that deal does not include a major negotiating point over the past several weeks: a plan for the future of DACA recipients.
McConnell says the Senate will vote in the coming weeks on a comprehensive immigration plan. But a real plan that has legs in the Congress and the White House has yet to surface.
“It’s not giving up at all,” U.S. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) tells Detroit Today host Stephen Henderson. “The Senate will work its process, which is debating the immigration issue…and that’s the way the process should work.”
Henderson also speaks with Arab American News Publisher Osama Siblani and New Michigan Media Director Hayg Oshagan, an associate professor of communications at Wayne State University. They are WDDET’s partners in the Detroit Journalism Cooperative.
“This president really is not surprising anyone who heard him during the election,” says Siblani.
“He was very clear of where he wants to go on immigration. Certainly, he wants to change the face of America that’s shifting from white to multi-color and multi-ethnicity.”
Oshagan says he thinks Congress will come together to approve protections for so-called DREAMers.
“I think DACA will pass eventually,” says Oshagan.
“My concern is the following, that there are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Taking care of 800,000 in DACA, I don’t want it to be as if it’s some bargain that the president has made that says, OK, I’ve taken care of 800,000…we will deport 11 million now, we will split up families, hurt the economy, send people back at a tremendous cost…and that this becomes a bargain that Democrats agree to.”
Click on the audio player above to hear the full conversation.
