House Democrats call on Senate to pass DACA bill
Rep. Joaquin Castro, House Democrats call on Senate to pass DACA bill
Benjamin WermundJune 4, 2020 Updated: June 4, 2020 3:44 p.m.
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Protesters hold up signs during a rally supporting Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, outside the White House on September 5, 2017. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS)Photo: Olivier Douliery, FILE / TNS
WASHINGTON — With the Supreme Court expected to decide the fates of more than 100,000 so-called Dreamers in Texas as soon as Monday, Democrats in Congress are pushing the Senate to vote on a bill the House passed a year ago to offer them a path to citizenship.
It’s almost certain to go nowhere, as Senate Republicans, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, and President Donald Trump’s administration have sought to roll protections for Dreamers into broader immigration bills with wider reforms and funding for the border wall.
Still, the Democrats, led by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of San Antonio, say the coronavirus outbreak has shown how vital Dreamers are, as some 200,000 of them work in essential jobs across the country. In Texas, as many as 14,000 work in fields such as health care, food service, farming and transportation in 2017, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.
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“Let’s be clear, their future is at risk because of President Trump and his Republican enablers in the Senate,” Castro said on Thursday, calling for “maximum pressure” on the Trump administration and Senate Republicans to strike a deal ahead of the Supreme Court ruling.
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Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) gets ready to speak at a news conference in Washington in February 2019.Photo: Chip Somodevilla /TNS
Trump in 2017 ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era initiative that gave certain young immigrantsa work permit and temporary protection from deportation. The move sparked a long-running push-and-pull between the president, Congress and the courts over a group of more than 700,000 immigrants brought to the country illegally as children — many of whom have only known the U.S. as home — who most Americans agree deserve protections.
As the Supreme Court heard arguments over the move last November, Trump, who has repeatedly said Congress should act to protect Dreamers, tweeted that he may strike a deal with Democrats to keep the Dreamers in the U.S. But no action followed, and a bill to put Dreamers on a path toward citizenship that passed the House last June remains stalled in the Senate.“Dreamers only know America as their home and they are valued, contributing members of the Houston community and communities all across our great country,” said U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Houston Democrat. “It is time for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to stop playing political games with the lives of Dreamers.”
Castro, who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called it “a manufactured crisis of cruelty,” during a conference call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and others.
“Congress does not need to wait for the Supreme Court to decide the fate of Dreamers,” he said.
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The House bill would offer permanent residency for a decade to those who were younger than 18 when they came to the U.S., as long as they have an American high school diploma or GED and pass a background check. The bill also would extend permanent residency to some living in the U.S. with temporary protected status.
Schumer said he believes the bill would pass if brought to the floor for a vote, but just seven House Republicans, including West Texas U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, supported it last summer. The White House, meanwhile, issued a veto threat against it last year, saying it would send “a signal that will invite more people to illegally enter our country.”
The White House at the time called for a broader immigration bill that also included funding for “the construction of the wall in priority locations identified by the Border Patrol to impede and deny the flows of illegal immigrants, drugs, and other illicit activities.”
Sen. Cornyn is a lead sponsor on legislation mirroring the White House proposal, which offers citizenship to DACA recipients, but also includes $25 billion for “real border security such as physical and virtual fencing, radar and other technologies.” The bill would also limit family-based immigration to the nuclear family and would grandfather-in all pending family-based visa applications, among other things.Senate Democrats blocked it in 2018.
“These are our neighbors, and they work alongside us in our community. They deserve a thoughtful and compassionate solution that I hope we deliver,” Cornyn said in 2018. “It’s a precarious position, I'm sure, to live every day not quite sure of what the future will mean.”
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