House Passes The Dream and Promise Act

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The House continues its breakneck pace of passing substantive legislation while the dysfunctional Senate is still bogged down with confirmation hearings for President Biden’s cabinet and department nominees.

It will take reforming or killing the Senate filibuster to clear the backlog of legislation the House has sent over to the Senate.

The Hill reports, House passes bills providing citizenship path for Dreamers, farmworkers:

House Democrats passed a pair of bills Thursday that would create a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and some migrant farm workers (essential workers), taking a piecemeal approach as the fate of President Biden’s [comprehensive] immigration package looks increasingly uncertain.

The Dream and Promise Act, which passed 228-197, would provide certainty to undocumented people brought to the U.S. as children whose ability to go to school, get work and even remain in the country has hung in the balance from administration to administration.

Nine Republicans joined all the Democrats.

Arizona Congressional Delegation: Yeas: Gallego, Grijalva, Kirkpatrick, O’Halleran. Stanton; Nay: Biggs, Gosar, Lesko, Schweikert.

Sponsor Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) called the bill “a major step in ending the veil of fear and uncertainty that has plagued the lives of our Dreamers for far too long.”

But beyond assisting Dreamers, the legislation would also allow those with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to apply for citizenship, a group from countries around the world that ranges from those fleeing civil unrest and natural disasters as early as the 1990s to Venezuelans deemed eligible for the status by the Biden administration earlier this month.

In total, the Dream and Promise Act would help naturalize nearly 4.5 million people.

If approved by the Senate, the legislation would cap a longstanding goal for Democrats, who have been eager to cement status for Dreamers, as former President Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program has been repeatedly challenged in court.

But the prospects for getting the “immigration week” legislation to Biden’s desk have been complicated by a surge at the southern border, with Republicans expressing hesitation for passing any immigration reform before dealing with that situation first.

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Meanwhile a Republican immigration package introduced Wednesday, which would also provide citizenship to Dreamers, includes a trigger mechanism to “ensure border security is completed before other reforms take place.”

This is the same coupling of border security poison pills with illusory Dreamer citizenship status that Republicans have used to kill all previous Dream Act bills. It is made in bad faith. Republicans do not want to give Dreamers a path to citizenship. Donald Trump, who ended DACA (reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court), said he would deport them.

UPDATE: Trump Fluffer Sen. Lindsey Graham “introduced a bipartisan immigration bill 43 days ago. But if it came up on the Senate floor today, he wouldn’t support it” Politico reports. Said Graham: “God, no. I’m not in support of legalizing one person until you’re in control of the border.” Making my point for me.

During House debate on the bill, Republicans frequently referenced a “crisis at our southern border,” arguing the Biden administration is encouraging increased migration.

I believe that would be Texas Gov. Greg Abbott who says it’s time to open Texas 100%. Immigrants took him quite literally, as an invitation to come to Texas.

President Biden on Tuesday urged migrants not to make the journey to the U.S. as his administration struggles to get a handle on a surge at the southern border. Biden tells migrants ‘don’t come over’ amid surge at the border. “I can say quite clearly don’t come over,” Biden told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News in an interview scheduled to air Wednesday morning. “Don’t leave your town or city or community.”

Apprehensions at the southern border increased 28 percent from January to February, to more than 100,000 people, according to the U.S. Border Patrol, and the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday said that the U.S. is “on pace to encounter more individuals on the Southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.”

Oh Really? Because 2019 under Donald Trump was the most apprehensions since 2007. It had been averaging around 400,000 annually. And many of those apprehended were deported.

While the White House has blamed the pressure on the border on former President Trump’s policies, Republicans have repeatedly claimed the Biden administration is undermining what had been a stable situation.

This is a creative use of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting deep recession in the U.S. from Trump’s grossly negligent mismanagement of the pandemic, which is why migration to the U.S. dropped off from the big spike in 2019 back to the average in 2020.  What we are seeing now is still close to the normal pattern of migration for the past decade (100,000 per quarter would be 400,000 annually) as the U.S. begins to solve its COVID-19 pandemic and the economy just got a major boost from the COVID Relief bill, providing greater economic opportunities.

Democrats said the case for Dreamers was one based on compassion, economics and the American history of immigration.

“They have so much to contribute, and they’re American in every way except on paper. For so many long years they’ve been burdened with uncertainty because of the anti-immigrant hysteria whipped up by these Republican fanatics,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said on the floor.

“Releasing their full potential would have such benefit to all of us.”

Democrats also contend that the pandemic has shown the value immigrants play both as essential workers and drivers of the economy.

“Recipients are essential to our communities. Many of them have lived in the United States for decades. They make up a significant portion of the workforce in key industries including construction, food service, and home health care. They contribute to the U.S. economy not only through their work, but also through consumer spending and tax revenue, and they have been particularly essential in serving our country during the COVID-19 pandemic,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said during the debate.

“This legislation is not about the border. This legislation is about finally delivering on our promise to America’s Dreamers and others who are equally deserving of our protection,” Nadler said.

The House on Thursday also approved legislation [The Farm Workforce Modernization Act] that provides a citizenship pathway for seasonal migrant farmworkers, allowing those who have been traveling to the U.S. for work for a decade to apply for citizenship after another four years.

That bill, which passed 247-174, is expected to provide citizenship to more than a million migrants, and it also ups the number of agricultural visas available to those seeking to come to the U.S. for work.

It secured more Republican support, including several votes from agricultural communities.

30 Republicans joined all but one of the Democrats [Jared Golden (D-Maine)].

Oh sure, when millionaire Republican farmers on Trump’s “farm welfare” program want to keep immigrant labor working in their fields – essential workers – Republicans are OK with that. Apparently Arizona’s Republican farmers no longer have the influence they once had with the Arizona GQP.

Arizona Congressional Delegation: Yeas: Gallego, Grijalva, Kirkpatrick, O’Halleran. Stanton; Nay: Biggs, Gosar, Lesko, Schweikert.

“For years my constituents have been asking me to fix our nation’s broken immigration system. They say it’s wreaking havoc on our farmers in rural communities,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), noting the difficulty of securing workers.

“We created a bill to create a merit-based agricultural immigration system for our nation’s food producers and make much-needed reforms….This bill is not about what is happening on the border,” Simpson said. “It’s about providing a stable, legal workforce for the people who put food on our tables.”

Though the two bills together would provide a substantial number of migrants with the ability to naturalize, it falls short of the 11 million figure that would be covered by [the comprehensive] immigration package pushed by Biden.

Though the White House issued statements of support for both bills, it also urged the passing of Biden’s bill, stressing the need “to reform other aspects of our immigration system.”