The House on Thursday passed a pair of popular immigration bills that once seemed like the tickets to a cross-aisle deal on one of Washington's thorniest issues — but not lately.
With the GOP seizing on the growing migration crisis at the southern border, even the two measures to offer legal protections for farm workers and the group known as Dreamers have become intensely partisan.
The bills — which, taken together, would offer a chance at citizenship for roughly 3 million undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years — did pick up some GOP support. Nine Republicans joined Democrats to pass the the Dream and Promise Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for an estimated 2 million undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children.
And in a 247-174 vote, the House passed the Farmworker Modernization Act, with 30 Republicans crossing party lines to support the legislation while one Democrat, Maine Rep. Jared Golden, voted no. The bill, introduced by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), would provide a pathway to citizenship for roughly 1 million farm workers and broadly expand the H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa program.
But neither bill is likely to overcome the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, especially with Republicans pushing for border security measures to advance alongside the measures.
"Democrats [are] wasting time on a bill that could not be less timely or targeted to the issue at hand," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a Thursday floor speech, days after returning from his own trip to the border, where he hammered President Joe Biden and Democrats for their policies.
Congress is facing an uphill climb as it tries to tackle small changes that boast broad public support, let alone Biden's sweeping reform plan that would offer a chance at citizenship for 11 million people. Now that the political and humanitarian albatross of unaccompanied child migrants at the southern border belongs to Biden and not Donald Trump, Republicans are eager to weaponize the issue — putting any kind of broader reform further out of reach.
“They’re going to continue to throw rocks instead of working with us,” Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), who represents a border district, said of the Republican attacks.
Escobar is among the many Democrats privately pressing the White House to improve the situation, some of whom attended a Congressional Hispanic Caucus call with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on the issue Wednesday. So far, CHC members said the Biden administration is doing more than his predecessor to resolve the border quandary, though they’re still pushing for more coordination with the Hill, according to sources on the call.
“It is a very difficult situation, no doubt. It’s unacceptable and unsustainable. But [we] at least have an administration and a Congress willing to take action and move the needle in the other direction,” Escobar said.
Even before the swell of migrant children attempting to enter the U.S., Biden’s broader immigration plan had nonexistent GOP support. The expansive proposal has faced some internal divisions as well and currently lacks the votes to pass the House, prompting Democrats to start by voting on the Dreamers and farm workers bills — a more piecemeal approach they say could actually stand a chance in the Senate.
Senior Democrats said Biden’s plan is getting closer to securing majority House support, potentially with some tweaks at the edges to appease their party's moderates. But House Republicans are showing no signs of willingness to engage in bipartisan talks on an issue that could be their key to clawing back the House majority next fall.
Still, immigration proponents hailed the both bills the House passed Thursday as critical first steps to fix a broken immigration system.
Both are top priorities of the CHC, which pushed House Democratic leaders to cancel its scheduled recess for this week so that the caucus could again send them over to the Senate — this time, under a Democratic president. Biden tweeted on Thursday to rally support for the bills ahead of the House's votes.
CHC Chair Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) said he knows “personally” that the farm worker bill would make an impact in the lives of millions.
“Due to a terrible tragedy in my family, I was brought to the United States from Mexico as a baby. My parents were farm workers who worked tirelessly, day in and day out,” Ruiz said.
Ruiz and other top Democrats are still vowing to go big on immigration in the coming months, despite the headwinds from the GOP.
“These two bills are not the fix, but they are a fix to part of the problem,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, describing the proposals set for House approval Thursday. “But we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform, and we're going to do so in the coming months.”
Beyond Biden’s broader citizenship plan, House Democrats are also eyeing a measure that would help essential workers during the coronavirus qualify for citizenship, according to a person familiar with their plans. The CHC is also playing a central role in that effort.
Seven Republicans backed the Dreamers bill in the last Congress, while 34 voted for the farm workers legislation. Prior to Thursday's vote, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said he had issues with some of the recent tweaks made to the legislation protecting Dreamers, but he wound up supporting the bill in the end.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), meanwhile, said Wednesday he would "probably" oppose the farm workers bill despite voting for it in 2019, citing both the border crisis and the fact that his state’s Farm Bureau came out against the legislation more adamantly this time around.
“It makes it tougher to pass any kind of immigration related issue if you don’t have some security with it on the southern border,” Cole said.
House Republicans unveiled a competing immigration proposal this week, sponsored by freshman Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), that pairs border security with other immigration changes. Those include protecting Dreamers, offering a 10-year path to achieving a renewable legal status for undocumented immigrants who have a clean criminal record and are employed, and expanding visas for agricultural workers.
Salazar voted for the Dreamers legislation on Thursday, even though she described it as an "imperfect bill" and noted it was unlikely to pass the Senate. But Salazar also said she wanted to show Democrats that she stands ready and willing to work with them.
"I want to send the right message to the Democrats that I'm willing to work with them," she told reporters after the vote. "Let's see if now they're going to work with us."
Ximena Bustillo contributed reporting.
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