Congress has never been able to agree on an immigration reform bill, but that won’t stop Democrats from advancing a measure to provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children.
Democrats next week will reintroduce the Dream Act, a bill they have long championed that would provide a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who arrived here before age 17 and meet certain other requirements.
The measure, sponsored by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., is a top priority for Democrats, who pledged to help the “Dreamers” escape legal limbo during the 2018 campaign.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., listed it as a key agenda item in a memo to rank-and-file lawmakers last week.
Roybal-Allard has sponsored Dream Act measures in the past, but during years of Republican control, the legislation never advanced because the two parties could not agree to border security increases or other immigration reforms the GOP was seeking as part of the deal.
Instead, it was used repeatedly as a bargaining chip in failed spending negotiations and was included in several immigration measures blocked by both chambers.
Now the Dream Act is poised to pass the House, with extra provisions addressing other immigrant groups seeking legal status.
The measure will also include a pathway to citizenship for more than 200,000 people living in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Enforced Departure. Most of those under these programs are from Haiti and El Salvador. The provision would counter a move by President Trump to end the TPS program for Sudan, Nicaragua, Haiti, and El Salvador, a move currently being blocked by the courts.
The Department of Homeland Security designates countries as qualifying for TPS if they are experiencing “armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary circumstances.” The much smaller DED program currently includes more than 7,000 Liberians.
[Related: Bernie Sanders hires illegal immigrant to be press secretary]
Roybal-Allard has not released the text of the new Dream Act, but it is expected to largely mirror the past immigration legislation she authored. She promised the measure “would enable millions of undocumented young people to fulfill their God-given potential, give back to their communities, and ultimately obtain U.S. citizenship.”
Democrats held a trio of House hearings on immigration last week, including one addressing the “Dreamers.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said it is critical to take up the legislation in response to President Trump, who in 2017 moved to end an Obama-era program providing legal status to about 700,000 people who arrived here as children.
[Also read: Dreamer tells lawmakers: Obama’s DACA program is ‘unconstitutional’]
The courts have blocked Trump’s move to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. The Roybal-Allard measure would expand DACA to include, overall, more than 3 million people who qualify as “Dreamers.”
“This hearing takes on a greater urgency in light of the Trump administration’s decisions to dismantle current protections for Dreamers and recipients of TPS and DED, actions that have thrown hundreds of thousands of families into turmoil, fear, and uncertainty,” Nadler said.
Republican support for the Dream Act without border security provisions has always been minimal, and the small group of GOP lawmakers who backed it in the last Congress are no longer in the House.
At the Judiciary Committee hearing last week, the panel’s ranking member, Rep. Doug Collins, R.-Ga., said Republicans would back a bill to legalize some of the “Dreamers,” but not without new laws to reduce illegal immigration, whether at the southern border, through visa overstays, or via fraudulently granted worker permits.
Without those measures, Collins said, few GOP lawmakers will back the House bill, and it will face little chance of consideration in the Republican-led Senate.
“I implore my Democrat colleagues to give us a bill to legalize some of the illegal immigrant population, to secure our border, and to enforce the law inside our country,” Collins said. “Any bill granting mass legalization and shunning real enforcement measures will be opposed by Republicans for the political stunt it is.”
