House Republicans failed to pass their “compromise” immigration bill

House Republicans have handily failed to pass an immigration bill — again.

For the past few weeks Republicans have been furiously negotiating among themselves to develop a “compromise” between conservative and moderate Republicans on immigration. But it wasn’t enough — by a long shot: The bill they voted on Wednesday lost the support of every single Democrat and 112 Republicans. The bill failed 121-301.

This is the second Republican-led immigration bill the House has failed to pass in two weeks. On June 21 a hardline conservative immigration bill introduced by Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), which would have drastically cut the nation’s legal immigration levels and provided an extension of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, failed as well. All Democrats and 41 Republicans voted against that bill.

The Republican “compromise” immigration bill included a litany of a conservative policy proposals, modeled after the White House’s demands. It would have given DACA-eligible immigrants temporary legal status for six years, after which they could apply for — but would not be guaranteed — a green card.

The bill also called for granting $25 billion in funds for a southern border wall, making it more difficult for migrants to seek asylum, and allowing families to be detained indefinitely at the border in response to the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” family separation policy. It also included provisions that would have significantly cut legal immigration levels.

Though the bill was originally aimed at solving the DREAMer problem, one analysis from the Libertarian think tank CATO projected that only 420,000 DREAMers would actually benefit from the bill’s “path to citizenship” — far fewer than the estimated 1.8 million DACA-eligible immigrants living in the US.

In the end Republicans ended up with what they started off with: a party that has no clear vision on immigration policy.

For the past two weeks, the House Republican immigration debate has been one engulfed in confusion.

Last week when it became clear that the GOP “compromise” bill might not have enough support to pass (most legislators said they didn’t even know what was in the sweeping legislation), Republican leaders delayed the vote for several days so they could renegotiate. But controversial conservative proposals like requiring E-Verify, which mandates that employers check the legal status of workers, risked losing the support of Republicans — especially those with agricultural districts who rely on immigrant labor.

Stuck between the opposing flanks of the Republican party, negotiators were unable to sway votes in any meaningful way.

Meanwhile, Trump has remained a mercurial figure in the House’s immigration debate. Just last week Trump asked what was the “purpose” of the two House bills, if Republicans were unable to get nine Democrats in the Senate to support them. Thus, he again blamed the left for “obstructing” the process.

Yet on Wednesday morning Trump tweeted out an all-caps endorsement of the “compromise bill.”

As Elise Foley and Matt Fuller reported for HuffPost, there’s an important political strategy behind this bill’s failure. By ensuring that the “compromise” bill loses more votes than the extra conservative Goodlatte bill that went down last week, conservatives can argue for moving the goalposts on immigration policy further to the right.

“If the vote total is bad tomorrow,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) told HuffPost on Tuesday, “it just means we have [a] more conservative conference than perhaps moderate.”

Immigration has always been a tough issue for Republicans, who are divided over having pro-immigration business interests and an increasingly right-wing voter base. Trump has only escalated the divisions, by throwing to Congress the need to solve the issue of DACA and family separations at the border.

There’s no question that if it were up to House Speaker Paul Ryan, Republicans wouldn’t be debating immigration policy right now at all — especially months before the highly contentious midterm elections.

But a moderate Republican revolt forced Ryan’s hand with the threat of a discharge petition that would have brought forward votes on bipartisan pieces of legislation. From the beginning Ryan made it very clear he was not happy with this discharge petition idea. He said it would cede control of the floor to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi by allowing bills to get through with mostly Democratic support. And he said Trump wouldn’t sign on. Needless to say, a series of contentious votes on a divisive issue like immigration also wouldn’t be a good look for Republicans in a high-stakes election year.

When Ryan set out to negotiate a compromise between moderates and conservatives according to the demands put forward by the White House, he stopped the discharge petition. His rhetoric around the immigration votes wasn’t about making law; Ryan said it would allow lawmakers to “express themselves.”

And neither bill was designed to get any Democratic support — which is needed for any legislation to be passed in the Senate.

It’s still not clear whether Republicans, frustrated by this outcome, will return to the idea of using a discharge petition to force votes on bipartisan immigration bills. If they do, they’d have to start from scratch and amass 218 signatures — an effort that would likely be much more difficult now after a discouraging bout of immigration negotiations.

In the end, the push for a “Republican” compromise didn’t result in any actual legislation, but it saved Republicans from a much more tumultuous floor debate. For now, these two failed votes have given conservatives an argument for more hardline immigration policies, and moderate Republicans can go home to their districts and say they tried.

But the millions of young unauthorized immigrants brought to the United States as children will just have to live in legal limbo.