The Senate parliamentarian said Wednesday that Democrats’ Plan B to include amnesty for illegal immigrants could not be included in their sweeping social spending budget reconciliation bill.
Democrats had sought to adjust the “green card through registry” date — most recently set at Jan. 1, 1972, during the Reagan administration in 1986 — to 2010, granting a pathway to legal permanent residency to illegal immigrants who can show they came to the United States before 2010.
That date change would be a “lifelong change in circumstances, the value of which vastly outweighs its budgetary impact,” said Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, according to Roll Call.
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Democrats are trying to utilize the budget reconciliation process to push through their budget bill of up to $3.5 trillion worth of social and environmental programs. The process allows them to bypass Republican support due to filibuster rules.
But bills in that process are not allowed to concern measures “extraneous” to the budget.
MacDonough, who previously worked for the Department of Justice handling immigration cases, said earlier this month that includes the planned provisions by Democrats to provide an estimated 8 million illegal immigrants and noncitizens legal permanent resident status and a pathway to citizenship. Essential workers during the coronavirus pandemic, Temporary Protected Status holders, and illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children would have been eligible.
“The policy changes of this proposal far outweigh the budgetary impact scored to it and it is not appropriate for inclusion in reconciliation,” she said in the ruling.
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, one of the leaders seeking immigration reform in the massive Build Back Better Act, said Democrats will seek another way to include immigration provisions in the bill.
“It’s unfortunate. I disagree with her, as I did with her original principle that she’s working from,” Menendez told reporters on Wednesday following the ruling.
However, Menendez teased a “Plan C” from Democratic senators as a way to include immigration reform in the bill, “which is for me to know and you to find out.”
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Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, who has long advocated for legislation to give “dreamers” who were brought to the U.S. as children a pathway to citizenship, said his reaction to Wednesday’s parliamentarian decision was “disappointment.”
“Unfortunately, we can’t find the language to clear for the reconciliation that might happen,” Durbin told reporters. “We’re gonna keep trying.”
