U.S. House to vote on citizenship path for ‘Dreamers’, many doubt success

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As the House of Representatives is about to vote on two immigration bills that would provide a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants, many believe that it may not succeed in finding adequate support in making passage  in the House and Senate.

Republican demands to address the surge of young children and families at the Mexican border, plus a lack of needed support in both the House and Senate, were making passage of legislation unlikely, Dick Durbin,, his chamber’s No. 2 Democratic leader, told reporters, a PTI report said.

“I don’t see a means of reaching that,” Durbin, a veteran of past efforts to strike an immigration deal, said of a comprehensive Bill in this two-year Congress. “I want it. I think we are much more likely to deal with discrete elements” of such a plan, the report said.

Yet in the same conversation, Durbin said the insistence on addressing the stream of migrants at the border would make it hard to deal even with individual, broadly popular immigration proposals. Among those would be forging a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers — US residents brought to the country illegally as children.

“I think Speaker Pelosi has discovered that she doesn’t have support for the comprehensive bill in the House,” said Dick Durbin, who also chairs that chamber’s Judiciary Committee. “And I think that indicates where it is in the Senate as well.”

But Durbin said that once the House has passed the two immigration measures this week, he and other senators will have to look for bipartisan consensus on a bill “with those two as the starting points.”

Durbin spoke while the House plans to approve a pair of Bills that would advance pieces of Democrats’ immigration agenda.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said the border problems make it “much harder” to reach an agreement. He told reporters that he believes a comprehensive Bill won’t succeed this year, the PTI report said.

Two important immigration bills are expected to be presented in the Senate by the congressional democrats this week.

The first, the American Dream and Promise Act,proposes a pathway to citizenship to 11 million undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children — otherwise known as “DREAMers.” It would also include a pathway to citizenship for people granted Temporary Protected Status, along with those who were recipients of Deferred Enforced Departure as of Jan. 20, 2021.

The House will also take into account the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would create a system in which workers in the agricultural industry could earn temporary status with an eventual option to become a permanent resident. It also would amend the existing H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa program, NPR reported.

Both bills have strong support from Democrats, and passed the lower chamber in 2019, the report said.

They represent a more targeted approach at passing immigration legislation than Biden’s comprehensive immigration proposal — the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 — which could face significant opposition among Republicans in the Senate.

Neither bill was taken up in the Senate when it had a Republican majority. With Democrats now holding narrow control of that chamber, they hope to be able to attract some Republican support, a Reuters report said.

Democrats last month formally introduced Biden’s sweeping immigration overhaul in Congress, a measure that would provide a path to U.S. citizenship for an estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally. It faces long odds to passage as no Republicans have supported it publicly and it is unclear whether all Democrats back the approach.