Rep. Pete Sessions: Guest Worker Plan Could Help DACA Dilemma

Rep. Pete Sessions Monday called for a guest worker plan that he said could help address the fate of some 800,000 "dreamers" who could be affected by an order from President Donald Trump to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and he believes his party needs to step up on the issue.

"A guest worker bill would acknowledge that they're here," the Texas Republican told CNN's "New Day" program about the DACA program, which was enacted through policy memorandum in 2012 by former President Barack Obama, not through legislation.

"While it's not the whole loaf, it's more than half a loaf," Sessions continued. "To move them directly into our workplace, directly into a status where they have an opportunity to make wages, pay taxes, and to have a legal status as a guest worker, I think that's the minimum that we should do. That gives opportunity for people who today are without any opportunity and that's where I believe we should start."

Congress, he also said, should have already taken up what he considers incremental steps in the matter.

Sessions told CNN the U.S. needs agricultural workers, and that in Dallas, "we have jobs that are begging for people who will actually work in the trades industry."

There are also thousands of jobs going without being filled in the northeast, said Sessions, because people can't pass drug screening tests.

"We need for the sake of America to deal with this," he said. "We have an available workforce that is there. We need to work on a guest worker plan, which would solve many of these bills that we have, and the problems of the direction we're going."

Sessions said he does believe there are enough votes in the House to pass a guest worker's bill, if the matter is handled "creatively and smart."

"We've got to work with the White House," said Sessions. "Our party and members of the House are prepared and I think ready for this."

Also on Monday, Sessions said he is not comfortable with the idea of tying a bill for Hurricane Harvey relief into the debt ceiling argument looming before Congress.

"I think the debt limit is going to have to pass," said Sessions. "The sequencing might be something that would be important here, but the opportunity for us to fund the government when there's so much going on, we need to untie those and make them separate, just like I'm wanting us to have a clean bill when we do handle the effort to fund Harvey. That should be clean."

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