House bill creates pathway to citizenship for ‘Dreamers’
WASHINGTON
The House voted Thursday to unlatch a gateway to citizenship for young Dreamers and immigrants who have fled war or natural disasters abroad, giving Democrats a win in the year’s first vote on an issue that once again faces a steep uphill climb in Congress.
On a near party-line 228-197 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 other migrants from a dozen troubled countries.
Nine largely moderate Republicans joined all Democrats in backing the Dreamers bill. Three of the Republicans were from Miami: Reps. Carlos Gimenez, Mario Diaz-Balart and Maria Elvira Salazar.
Passage seemed imminent 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.
Both bills 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.
The House bills’ prospects were gloomy in the evenly split Senate, where the 50 Democrats will need at least 10 GOP supporters to break Republican filibusters. The outlook was even grimmer for Biden’s more ambitious goal of legislation making citizenship possible for all of the estimated 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 deadlocked over immigration for years, and it once again seemed 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 Housepassed measures languishing in the Senate to build support for abolishing that chamber’s bill-killing filibusters.
Democrats said their bills were aimed not at border security but at addressing groups of immigrants who deserve to be helped.
“They’re so much of our country,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said of so-called 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.”
The “Dreamer” bill would grant conditional legal status for 10 years to many immigrants up to age 18 who were brought into the U.S. illegally before this year. They’d have to graduate from high school or have equivalent educational credentials, not have serious criminal records and meet other conditions.
To attain legal permanent residence, often called a green card, they’d have to obtain a higher education degree, serve in the military or be employed for at least three years.
Like all others with green cards, they could then apply for citizenship after five years.
The measure would also grant green cards to an estimated 400,000 immigrants with temporary protected status, which allows temporary residence to people who have fled violence or natural disasters in a dozen countries.