Democrats, who campaigned on providing a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s illegal immigrants, will take up legislation this week that would offer legal residency and citizenship to millions of “Dreamers” and migrant farmworkers.
Democrats plan votes on two major immigration bills that would provide a pathway to citizenship for a large swath of people living and working here illegally.
The first bill, which recently enjoyed bipartisan support in the House, would offer legal permanent residency and a pathway to citizenship to immigrant farmworkers who make up a major part of the nation’s agriculture sector.
“The men and women who work America’s farms feed the nation, but many of them do so while living and working in a state of uncertainty and fear, which has only been heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat and author of the measure, said. “Stabilizing the workforce will protect the future of our farms and our food supply.”
A second bill would offer conditional permanent resident status and a pathway to citizenship for millions of Dreamers who came to the United States before the age of 18.
Legalizing Dreamers has been a top legislative goal for Democrats, who say most young people who came to the U.S. illegally as children have no connection to their home countries after growing up, attending school, and finding jobs.
The citizenship pathway would include the nearly 700,000 young illegal immigrants protected from deportation under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program as well as an additional 1.6 million young people who came to the U.S. illegally before the age of 18.
Many Republicans support legalizing Dreamers, but they want the legislation to strengthen the nation’s border security and to curb chain migration.
Neither of the two Democratic measures, however, takes significant steps to shore up border security or curb illegal immigration.
Democrats plan to bring up the two bills as the Biden administration grapples with a major surge in illegal immigration along the southern border that has drawn criticism from the GOP and concern from immigration officials.
Thousands of illegal immigrants have poured over the southern border since President Biden took office, many of them children. The surge has overwhelmed intake centers and in some cases is forcing immigration officials to release illegal immigrants in nearby cities.
Republicans accuse Democrats of implementing an open borders policy that is endangering America and encouraging the surge.
Democrats, long opposed to President Donald Trump’s border wall, have stopped all funding and construction of new physical barriers meant to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the U.S. Biden attempted to implement a 100-day moratorium on deportations, but a federal judge blocked the move.
Biden and Democrats are encouraging illegal immigration and making it easier for them to cross into the U.S. and sending the message they won’t be deported, Republicans said.
“Just last month alone, 100,000 migrants were encountered attempting to illegally cross our border,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said Monday after leading a delegation of Republicans to the southern border.
But Democrats are determined to provide a pathway to citizenship for those living here illegally, regardless of the border crisis.
Earlier this month, House and Senate Democrats unveiled President Biden’s proposal to provide an eight-year pathway to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.
While neither the House nor the Senate has scheduled the Biden bill, the farmworker and Dreamer measures would begin to accomplish the goal in a piecemeal fashion.
The two bills first passed the House in 2019 but were ignored by the GOP-led Senate.
Now that Democrats are back in control of the Senate, the party will be under intense pressure from immigration groups to pass the two bills and in particular the Dreamers legislation.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said on Monday the two House bills could serve as “starting points” for a comprehensive immigration overhaul that addresses all illegal immigrants.
The Dream and Promise Act passed the House in 2019 with the support of every Democrat and seven Republican votes.
The Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which affects key agriculture states, passed in 2019 with nearly all Democrats and 34 Republican votes.
Republicans who back the farmworkers bill say it needed to bring stability to the agriculture industry and its workers.
More than 1 million farm workers and more than 2 million Dreamers could be eligible for a pathway to citizenship under the two bills Democrats plan to pass this week.
The Dreamers legislation would also provide a pathway to citizenship for more than 300,000 immigrants from countries including Venezuela and Haiti who are living in the U.S. under the Temporary Protected Status program.
