House draft bill offers ‘Dreamers’ protections, cuts legal immigration
Measure has $23.4B for Mexican border wall
WASHINGTON – House Republican leaders released a draft immigration bill Thursday that would provide legal protections for undocumented young people known as “Dreamers” while providing $23.4 billion for a wall along the border with Mexico.
That funding would be combined with $1.6 billion appropriated to reach President Donald Trump’s requested $25 billion for the wall.
The draft legislation, circulated by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and other leaders to rank-and-file GOP lawmakers, is intended to be a compromise on an issue that has bitterly divided the party. A vote is likely next week, but it is unclear whether the legislation has the votes to pass or if Trump will back it.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the GOP proposal.
On one of the most divisive issues, the proposal would allow some 1.8 million people brought to the country as children and now here illegally to apply for “non-immigrant status”– essentially a conditional legal visa – if they met certain conditions. They would need a high school diploma or GED and have to be younger than 36 as of Friday.
Those conditional visas would be taken from new restrictions on legal immigration included in the GOP bill, which would scrap a diversity lottery program and limit family-based immigration. Once the “Dreamers” have taken the visa slots from those two programs, they will disappear – thus reducing legal immigration.
If the “Dreamers” win that non-immigrant status, then after six years, they can apply for a green card, setting them on the path to citizenship.
“Overall we want a permanent solution for ‘Dreamers’ but it should not come at the economic expense of the American worker and their family,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a group that has been pushing for a bipartisan immigration solution. Noorani said the cuts to legal immigration would hurt a dwindling labor force and make American businesses less competitive. Plus, Noorani fretted, a GOP-only bill has little chance of passing the Senate.
“At the end of the day my fear is that Speaker Ryan and House leadership are going to go through this exercise and it will collapse under its own weight,” Noorani said.
It would also leave in place immigration provisions that allow adult U.S. citizens to apply for green cards for their parents, and there are no limits on how many people can receive that legal immigration status.
That provision was already sparking strong opposition from immigration hawk.
“This bill is an amnesty for the parents of DACAs as well,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports restricting immigration.