House OKs bill helping Dreamer immigrants
Gateway to citizenship opens for Dreamers and some other immigrants, though Senate prospects uncertain.
The House voted Thursday to unlatch a gateway to citizenship for young Dreamers, migrant farm workers and immigrants who’ve fled war or natural disasters, giving Democrats wins in the year’s first votes on an issue that once again faces an uphill climb to make progress in the Senate.
On a near party-line 228197 vote, lawmakers approved one bill offering legal status to around 2 million Dreamers, brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and hundreds of thousands of migrants admitted for humanitarian reasons from a dozen troubled countries.
They then voted 247-174 for a second measure creating similar protections for 1 million farm workers who have worked in the U.S. illegally; the government estimates they comprise half the nation’s agricultural laborers.
Nine Republicans joined all Democrats in voting for the Dreamers measure, but 30 GOP lawmakers backed the farm workers bill, giving it a more bipartisan hue.
GOP opposition
Nonetheless, both bills largely hit a wall of opposition from Republicans insistent that any immigration legislation bolster security at the Mexican border, which waves of migrants have tried breaching in recent weeks. The GOP has accused congressional Democrats of ignoring that problem and President Joe Biden of fueling it by erasing former President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies, even though that surge began while Trump was still in office.
While Dreamers win wide public support and migrant farm workers are a backbone of the agriculture industry, both House bills face gloomy prospects in the evenly split Senate. That chamber’s 50 Democrats will need at least 10 GOP supporters to break Republican filibusters.
Rockier roads ahead
The outlook was even grimmer for Biden’s more ambitious goal of legislation making citizenship possible for all 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally, easing visa restrictions, improving border security technology and spending billions in Central America to ease problems that prompt people to leave.
Congress has long deadlocked over immigration, which again seems headed toward becoming political ammunition. Republicans could use it to rally conservative voters in upcoming elections, while Democrats could add it to a stack of House-passed measures languishing in the Senate to build support for abolishing that chamber’s billkilling filibusters.
Democrats said their measures were aimed not at border security but at immigrants who deserve help.
“They’re so much of our country,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said of Dreamers, who like many immigrants have held frontline jobs during the pandemic. “These immigrant communities strengthen, enrich and ennoble our nation, and they must be allowed to stay.”
Neither House measure would directly affect those trying to enter from Mexico. Republicans criticized them anyway for lacking border security provisions and used the debate to lambast Biden, who’s ridden a wave of popularity since taking office and winning a massive COVID-19 relief package.