Divided House OKs Dems’ bill helping Dreamer immigrants
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.
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, even though that surge began while Trump was still in office.
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 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 House-passed measures languishing in the Senate to build support for abolishing that chamber’s billkilling 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 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 cross the boundary from Mexico. Republicans criticized them anyway for lacking border security provisions and turned the debate into an opportunity to lambast Biden, who’s ridden a wave of popularity since taking office and winning a massive COVID-19 relief package.
“It is a Biden border crisis, and it is spinning out of control,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
While the number of migrants caught trying to cross the border from Mexico has been rising since April, the 100,441 encountered last month was the highest figure since March 2019. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said the number is tracking toward a 20year high.
Democrats were making that problem worse, Republicans said, with bills they said entice smugglers to sneak more immigrants into the U.S. and provide amnesty to immigrants who break laws to enter and live in the country.
“We don’t know who these people are, we don’t know what their intentions are,” Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., said of immigrant farm workers who might seek legal status. He added, “It’s frightening, it’s irresponsible, it’s endangering American lives.”