Why once-supportive Senate Republicans may sink House Dreamer bill

House Democrats introduced a bill Tuesday to grant permanent protections to undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, but the fate of those Dreamers will ultimately rest in the hands of Senate Republicans, a group that has struggled for nearly two decades to come up with a solution that they, and their conservative base, can endorse.

There used to be a time when the DREAM Act was accepted by a wide range of Senate Republicans who felt it unfair to punish children for the actions of their parents. The 2003 version of the bill was sponsored by former Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, and had 12 other GOP members signed on as co-sponsors.

But little by little, as the party's more conservative wing began viewing the DREAM Act less as an act of "compassion" and more an act of "amnesty," the GOP has backed away from the idea. The 2005 version of the bill had nine Republican co-sponsors, the 2007 version had five, the 2009 version had two, and the 2011 version had none.

The tide had changed so drastically by 2017 that most Senate Republicans quickly tweeted out statements supporting President Donald Trump after he announced his decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the Obama-era program that had protected more than 800,000 Dreamers from deportation.

That decision was blocked by federal courts, leaving Dreamers in legal limbo and prompting the push by House Democrats to pass a permanent legislative fix for them. But its prospects in today's Senate GOP caucus appear dire.

Richard Lugar, a Republican from Indiana who served 36 years in the Senate, was an early and consistent supporter of the DREAM Act. He said even in the early days of the bill, before the tea party movement and the Freedom Caucus and Trump's zealous band of followers, Republicans agonized between their personal belief that Dreamers were entitled to citizenship and their political concerns over supporting any form of so-called "amnesty."