The House will vote on HR 6, the 2021 American Dream and Promise Act, sponsored by Democratic Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard of California. It would provide a path to citizenship for the young undocumented immigrants, known as ‘dreamers’, as well as recipients of temporary protected status and beneficiaries with deferred compulsory departure. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the legislation will cover up to 4.4 million individuals who are eligible for permanent residence.
The House is also going to vote on HR 1603, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, legislation from two parties of the Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California and the Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington. The bill would allow farm workers, and their spouses and children, to earn legal status through continued work in the agricultural sector, and would change the H-2A agricultural gas worker program.
Both of these bills have been passed by the House in previous years, but are being voted on again with Democrats holding slim majorities in the House and Senate. They are both expected to pass through the House again, but they will hit a wall in the Senate.
Home Republics have hit the Biden government over the past few weeks over the influx of migrants crossing the border, including the huge increase in underage minors that made the move to the United States.
Many of the migrants crossing the border said they believed the Biden government would be more welcome than the Trump administration, which has adopted a tougher stance.
“It’s more than a crisis. It’s a human grief,” GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy said in a newsletter on a trip to the border this week. “The sad part of all this, it does not have to happen. This crisis is being created by the presidential policies of this new government. There is no other way to claim it than a Biden border crisis.”
The pressure to pass these two bills will give House Democrats the opportunity to say they are pushing for immigration reforms, but there are still questions about the fate of broader efforts to overhaul the country’s immigration system.
And while some progressive Democrats would like to see extensive legislation on immigration reform, rather than these two pieces of bill, other Democrats have thrown cold water on the idea, emphasizing how much it would be an uphill climb to pass a broader immigration package.
“I do not see a way to achieve that,” the Illinois Democrat said. “I want it. I think we are much more likely to deal with discrete elements.”
Durbin, in view of the House’s attempt to shift immigration bills, said: ‘I think Speaker Pelosi has discovered that she has no support for the comprehensive bill in the House,’ Durbin said. “And that indicates where it is in the Senate as well.”
CNN’s Manu Raju contributed to this report.