Nearly a year in office and little if any progress has been made on President Donald Trump's border wall.
Funding remains the biggest obstacle as talks continue about a possible deal involving the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Congress is reportedly considering permanent residency, residency for perhaps three or four years – subject to renewal — and citizenship for roughly 700,000 illegal aliens brought to the U.S. as children.
Others argue the GOP majority is dragging its feet.
“Republicans should fund this no matter what,” says Hans von Spakovsky at the Heritage Foundation. “I don't think they should only do this as part of a deal on DACA, in fact, I don't think they should do any deal on DACA.
Questions also remain as to what a border wall will look like.
“What we're talking about is securing the border with whatever is appropriate for the particular geographic area and the conditions that are there,” Von Spakovsky says.
At the very least, he believes immigration enforcement will increase both along the border and inside the mainland.
“We're going to see even stronger enforcement measures put in by the administration, and I think by the end of the year we're going to see very good results with the number of people crossing the border going down and the number of illegal aliens inside the country also going down.”