House Passes Two Immigration Bills as GOP Presses Biden on Border Surge

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The House voted Thursday to unlatch a gateway to citizenship for young Dreamers, migrant farm workers and immigrants who’ve fled war or natural disasters, giving Democrats wins in the year’s first votes on an issue that once again faces an uphill climb to make progress in the Senate.

On a near party-line 228-197 vote, lawmakers approved one bill offering legal status to around 2 million Dreamers, brought to the U.S. illegally as children, and hundreds of thousands of migrants admitted for humanitarian reasons from a dozen troubled countries.

They then voted 247-174 for a second measure creating similar protections for 1 million farm workers who have worked in the U.S. illegally; the government estimates they comprise half the nation’s agricultural laborers.

Both bills hit a wall of opposition from Republicans insistent that any immigration legislation bolster security at the Mexican border, which waves of migrants have tried breaching in recent weeks. The GOP has accused congressional Democrats of ignoring that problem and President Joe Biden of fueling it by erasing former President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies, even though that surge began while Trump was still in office.

While Dreamers win wide public support and migrant farm workers are a backbone of the agriculture industry, both House bills face gloomy prospects in the evenly split Senate. That chamber’s 50 Democrats will need at least 10 GOP supporters to break Republican filibusters.

The outlook was even grimmer for Biden’s more ambitious goal of legislation making citizenship possible for all 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally, easing visa restrictions, improving border security technology and spending billions in Central America to ease problems that prompt people to leave.

Congress has deadlocked over immigration for years, and the issue once again seemed headed toward becoming political ammunition. Republicans could use it to rally conservative voters in upcoming elections, while Democrats could add it to a stack of House-passed measures languishing in the Senate to build support for abolishing that chamber’s bill-killing filibusters.

Democrats said their measures were aimed not at border security but at addressing groups of immigrants who deserve to be helped.

“They’re so much of our country,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said of Dreamers, who like many immigrants have held frontline jobs during the pandemic. “These immigrant communities strengthen, enrich and ennoble our nation, and they must be allowed to stay.”

Neither House measure would directly affect those trying to cross the boundary from Mexico. Republicans criticized them anyway for lacking border security provisions and turned the debate into an opportunity to lambast Biden, who’s ridden a wave of popularity since taking office and winning a massive COVID-19 relief package.

“It is a Biden border crisis, and it is spinning out of control,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

While the number of migrants caught trying to cross the border from Mexico has been rising since April, the 100,441 encountered last month was the highest figure since March 2019. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said the number is tracking toward a 20-year high.

Democrats were making that problem worse, Republicans said, with bills they said entice smugglers to sneak more immigrants into the U.S. and provide amnesty to immigrants who break laws to enter and live in the country.

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