New US Aid For Ukraine Seems Unlikely  12/10 09:19

   A deal to provide further U.S. assistance to Ukraine by year-end appears to 
be increasingly out of reach for President Joe Biden. The impasse is deepening 
in Congress despite dire warnings from the White House about the consequences 
of inaction as Republicans insist on pairing the aid with changes to America's 
immigration and border policies.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- A deal to provide further U.S. assistance to Ukraine by 
year-end appears to be increasingly out of reach for President Joe Biden. The 
impasse is deepening in Congress despite dire warnings from the White House 
about the consequences of inaction as Republicans insist on pairing the aid 
with changes to America's immigration and border policies.

   After the Democratic president said this past week he was willing to "make 
significant compromises on the border," Republicans quickly revived demands 
that they had earlier set aside, hardening their positions and attempting to 
shift the negotiations to the right, according to a person familiar with the 
talks who was not authorized to publicly discuss them and spoke on condition of 
anonymity.

   The latest proposal, from the lead GOP negotiator, Sen. James Lankford, 
R-Okla., came during a meeting with a core group of senators before they left 
Washington on Thursday afternoon. It could force the White House to consider 
ideas that many Democrats will seriously oppose, throwing new obstacles in the 
difficult negotiations.

   Biden is facing the prospect of a cornerstone of his foreign policy -- 
repelling Russian President Vladimir Putin from overtaking Ukraine -- crumbling 
as U.S. support for funding the war wanes, especially among Republicans. The 
White House says a failure to approve more aid by year's end could have 
catastrophic consequences for Ukraine and its ability to fight.

   To preserve U.S. backing, the Biden administration has quietly engaged in 
Senate talks on border policy in recent weeks, providing assistance to the 
small group of senators trying to reach a deal and communicating what policy 
changes it would find acceptable.

   The president is trying to satisfy GOP demands to reduce the historic number 
of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border while alleviating Democrats' 
fears that legal immigration will be choked off with drastic measures.

   As talks sputtered to a restart this past week, Democrats warned Republicans 
that time for a deal was running short. Congress is scheduled to depart 
Washington in mid-December for a holiday break.

   "Republicans need to show they are serious about reaching a compromise, not 
just throwing on the floor basically Donald Trump's border policies," Senate 
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday before Republicans made 
their counteroffer.

   But the new Republican proposal dug in on policy changes that had led 
Democrats to step back from the negotiations, according to the person familiar 
with the talks. The GOP offer calls for ending the humanitarian parole program 
that's now in place for existing classes of migrants -- Ukrainians, Afghans, 
Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Haitians. That idea had been all but 
dashed before.

   Additionally, those groups of migrants would not be allowed to be paroled 
again if the terms of their stay expire before their cases are adjudicated in 
immigration proceedings.

   GOP senators proposed monitoring systems such as ankle bracelets for people, 
including children, who are detained at the border and are awaiting parole. 
Republicans want to ban people from applying for asylum if they have transited 
through a different country where they could have sought asylum instead. GOP 
lawmakers also want to revive executive powers that would allow a president to 
shut down entries for wide-ranging reasons.

   Further, after migrant encounters at the border recently hit historic 
numbers, the GOP proposal would set new guidelines requiring the border to be 
essentially shut down if illegal crossings reach a certain limit.

   Lankford declined to discuss specifics after the Thursday meeting, but said 
he was trying to "negotiate in good faith." He said the historic number of 
migrants at the border could not be ignored. The sheer number of people 
arriving at the border has swamped the asylum system, he said, making it 
impossible for authorities to adequately screen the people they allow in.

   "Do you want large numbers of undocumented individuals and unscreened 
individuals without work permits, without access to the rest of the economy?" 
Lankford said.

   The lead Democratic negotiator, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, did not 
quickly respond to the GOP proposal.

   Senators had made some progress in the talks before Thursday, finding 
general agreement on raising the initial standard for migrants to enter the 
asylum system -- part of what's called the credible fear system. The 
administration has communicated that it is amenable to that change and that it 
could agree to expand expedited removal to deport immigrants before they have a 
hearing with an immigration judge, according to two people briefed on the 
private negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

   Immigration advocates and progressives in Congress have been alarmed by the 
direction of the talks, especially because they have not featured changes aimed 
at expanding legal immigration.

   Robyn Barnard, director of refugee advocacy with Human Rights First, called 
the current state of negotiations an "absolute crisis moment." She warned that 
broadening the fast-track deportation authority could lead to a mass rounding 
up of immigrants around the country and compared it to the situation during the 
Trump administration. "Communities across the country would be living in fear," 
she said.

   But Republican senators, sensing that Biden, who is campaigning for a second 
term, wants to address the historic number of people coming to the border, have 
taken an aggressive stance and tried to draw the president directly into 
negotiations.

   "The White House is going to have to engage particularly if Senate Democrats 
are unwilling to do what we are suggesting be done," said Sen. John Thune, 
R-S.D., at a news conference Thursday.

   The White House has so far declined to take a leading role in negotiations. 
"Democrats have said that they want to compromise. Have that conversation," 
said White House press secretary Karine-Jean Pierre.

   After every GOP senator this past week voted not to move ahead with 
legislation that would provide tens of billions of dollars in military and 
economic assistance for Ukraine, many in the chamber were left in a dour mood. 
Even those who held out hope for a deal acknowledged it would be difficult to 
push a package through the Senate at this late stage.

   Even if senators reach a deal, the obstacles to passage in the House are 
considerable. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has signaled he will fight for 
sweeping changes to immigration policy that go beyond what is being discussed 
in the Senate. Also, broad support from House Democrats is far from guaranteed, 
as progressives and Hispanic lawmakers have raised alarm at curtailing access 
to asylum.

   "Trading Ukrainian lives for the lives of asylum seekers is morally bankrupt 
and irresponsible," Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., posted on X, the platform 
formerly known as Twitter, as part of a coordinated campaign by Hispanic 
Democrats.

   The unwieldy nature of the issue left even Lankford, who was one of the few 
senators optimistic that a deal could be reached this year, acknowledging the 
difficulty of finding an agreement in the coming days.

   "There's just a whole lot of politics that have been bound up in this," he 
said as he departed the Capitol for the week. "Thirty years it hasn't been 
resolved because it's incredibly complicated."