More than 90 House Democrats led by progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have urged their Senate colleagues to include a pathway to citizenship in President Biden’s nearly $2 trillion social spending bill — and ignore two rulings by the Senate’s parliamentarian in the process.
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Senate President pro tempore Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the House lawmakers insisted that “when Congress promises ‘immigration reform,’ as it has done throughout the negotiation process, our party must fully deliver on that promise.”
“We cannot let an unelected advisor determine which promises we fulfill and which we do not, especially when the vast majority of Americans — in both parties — want us to provide a pathway to citizenship,” the representatives added.
Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has twice rejected immigration reform language that Democrats have sought to insert in the multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better Act.
In September, MacDonough denied a provision that would have permitted immigrants who arrived in the US before 2010 to apply for legal status if they met other conditions. Current federal law only allows those in the US before 1972 to apply for legal status.
Days earlier, she turned aside a proposal to grant permanent status to immigrants illegally brought to the US as children, farm and essential workers and people who fled certain countries affected by violence or natural disasters.
MacDonough’s rulings are rooted in the nature of the bill, which Senate Democrats are attempting to pass without Republican support through the parliamentary measure of reconciliation. However, Senate rules call for reconciliation bills to be strictly concerned with the federal budget — and for the removal of provisions deemed “merely incidental” to government spending.
“We do understand that the Senate Parliamentarian has issued a memorandum dismissing — despite evidence to the contrary — the budgetary impact of providing a pathway to citizenship,” the lawmakers wrote. “But the role of the Parliamentarian is an advisory one, and the Parliamentarian’s opinion is not binding.”
The House version of the Build Back Better legislation, which narrowly passed last Friday, includes a provision that would allow about 6.5 million illegal immigrants to apply for work permits granting them parole status for five years and protecting them from deportation. However, MacDonough ruled that language couldn’t be included in the Senate version of the bill.
“For decades, immigrants have sought relief from the precarity of jumping from one temporary status to another in the only country they can call home,” the House Democrats’ letter read. “Another temporary status would merely extend this precarity.”
“The moment is now,” the lawmakers concluded. “We urge you to reinstate a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, [Temporary Protected Status] holders, farm workers, and essential workers in the Senate’s version of the reconciliation bill.”