What Do Democrats Want in Immigration?

By Peggy Sands Orchowski

Thursday June 14:  The Congressional game to supposedly "save the DREAMERS" continued this afternoon with the Republicans revealing what elements they would include in the immigration bill that House Minority Leader Paul Ryan promised to bring to the floor for a vote sometime next week.  But while the bill includes a pathway to citizenship for DREAMERS who came in both illegally and legally, and includes a provision to keep families of migrants who come in illegally together, instead of being separated, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelossi claimed ""Everything we've heard has been very negative".

Here are the main proposals in the Republican bill:

·       create a visa for young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children,  known as Dreamers,

·       as well as other young immigrants who are here legally but on more  ?? temporary permits.

·       provide a path to legal status and eventually citizenship,

·       won't add to overall number of visas because the bill would cut diversity and family-based visas.

·       authorize the full $25 billion President Donald Trump has requested to build a wall along the Southern border.

             ·       include a provision to allow children to be kept with their parents when detained                          at  the border. 

Ryan's promise blocked the discharge petition that Democrats and some Republicans failed to complete as expected Wednesday afternoon, June 13.  It was their last chance this month to bring up four immigration bills to the floor for a vote in an unusual process called "Queen of the Hill".  The four bills included three by Republicans and a fourth supported unanimously by Democrats.

Now the vote will only be on two of the bills.  The first js the "Securing America's Future Act" (H.R.4760), aka the "Goodlatte" Bill.  That proposal would grant a three year, renewable, legal status for some 690,000 recipients of President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order of 2012. It would also institute stronger border protection and enforcement measures, as well as revise a number of legal immigration visas and priorities including making e-verify a national requirement instead of just a voluntary work permit check. 

The second bill would be the Ryan bill.

The Democratic bill that won't be included on the floor vote next week is the

"Dream Act of 2017" (H.R.3440, identical to Senate bill S.1615). That would give permanent status to all DACA recipients and to new applicants who had been continuously physically present in the country for four years preceding the bill's enactment (2018? 2019?). They must have been under 18 years old age when they entered, and must have obtained a high school comletion certificate of some kind. Over four million individuals are estimated to qualify as DREAMERS under this new Dream Act.

That is obviously what Pelosi wants – as many illegal immigrants as can be squeezed into a definition to be legalized.  That is why she says she only hears negative about the Ryan plan. 

The Democrats have been using the sympathy towards DREAMERS as "small children brought into the country illegally by their parents without their knowledge" for almost ten year.   Even though that is not the definition of DREAMERS in any DREAM Act proposals nor DACA executive orders.  As currently defined and under the Democrats new Dream Act, a DREAMER is any foreign national who came in the country before the age of 18 – legally or illegally—was here four years consecutively and is an illegal alien when they apply. Only a few expanded border protections would be added, but not a wall nor any interior enforcement nor any change to legal visas.  

Most Americans do not picture nor support the idea of DREAMERS as teenagers who knowingly assaulted the borders or overstayed a visa. But apparently Democrat leaders will only support bills where the number of immigrants is expanded.

The Queen of the Hill favors these Democratic initially because Republican votes would be split between the other three bills.  The expanded Dream Act most likely would get the most votes and would proceed to the Senate. 

But it would be a short-lived victory for Democrats. Unless they were able to win a majority in the Senate in the November 2018 elections, the Republican Senate would most likely not pass such a broad DREAMER Act. And even if the expanded bill did manage to pass both houses of Congress in the next two years, President Trump would certainly veto it.

It seems likely now that the 700,000 to 1.8 million DREAMERS that Republicans are willing to legalize before the November elections, will still be left in legal limbo and subject to deportation by the end of the year.  Thanks mainly to the Democrats.

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