The closest Congress has come in decades to creating a pathway to permanent legal residency for millions of immigrants rested in the fate of an unknown US Senate officer.
But last week, she summarily dashed their hopes — and that of Democrats, who had tried to pass major immigration revisions through the budget reconciliation process.
It was a desperate attempt to achieve the overdue but elusive restructuring of our immigration laws — a move that an overwhelming majority of Americans support. Yet Republican opposition in Congress has killed, time and again, legislative action to legalize undocumented immigrants on Capitol Hill.
This time, the kill came from a nonpartisan, non-elected official: Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who is tasked with upholding old and obscure Senate procedures and regulations. She determined that the Democrats’ plan to revise immigration laws via the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package was not allowed. It represents a major blow to Biden’s immigration agenda — one that so far has been disappointing, to say the least. Nonetheless, Democrats must keep up their creative immigration reform efforts and come up with alternative ways to maximize their small majority in Congress to ultimately circumvent the filibuster.
MacDonough had to evaluate the immigration measures against their budgetary impact, according to Senate rules and precedents that set limits for the type of policy changes that can be legislated via the budget. For instance, if the policies’ effects on the budget are merely incidental, then they cannot be included.
Democrats had argued that the measures would increase the deficit by roughly $139 billion, which was exactly the reason why it could be included in the budget reconciliation process. But MacDonough rejected the immigration changes in the budget bill because granting legal residency to as many as eight million immigrants would be a “tremendous and enduring policy change that dwarfs its budgetary impact.”
It’s not that there isn’t any precedent. Prior to this effort, immigration changes have been approved under budget reconciliation four times in the last three decades. In 2005, the Senate (controlled by the GOP) passed a bipartisan reconciliation bill that included an increase of green cards, or permanent resident cards.
Democrats can still try to use budget reconciliation and introduce revised immigration reforms, which they’re expected to do. But another viable option for Democrats is to overrule MacDonough and push forward with immigration overhaul, which is just what Cecilia Muñoz, a former senior staff member in the Obama White House, convincingly argued in an op-ed in The Hill. Muñoz wrote that MacDonough’s reasoning amounts to “the kind of argument you make when you are trying to get to ‘no.’”
“We believe that our proposal is permissible in budget reconciliation and we support their good-faith engagement with the Parliamentarian’s ruling,” said Lorella Praeli, co-president of Community Change Action and former director of Latino outreach for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, during a press call last week. “But Democrats do not get to hide behind the Parliamentarian this year … They have the support of the majority of the American people. They have the White House, the Senate, and the House. They will not get brownie points or participation trophies for trying.”
During the same call, Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of United We Dream Action, said, “Majority Leader Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, President Biden, and Vice President Harris hold all the power to do the right thing and deliver on their promises of citizenship for millions. They must remember that brave and powerful Black and brown advocates worked tirelessly to put them in their positions of power. It’s time for Democrats to show the same bravery.”
They could not have put it better. Democrats must show bravery; they can’t hide behind a procedural loss now. Indeed, Monday’s announcement that the Biden administration is proposing a temporary workaround to save DACA, the program benefiting hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the US as young children, shows evidence they can push forward. MacDonough’s nonbinding ruling must not be the end of the Democrats’ efforts to restructure our laws so that millions of immigrants can finally come out of the shadows permanently.
Marcela García can be reached at marcela.garcia@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @marcela_elisa.
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Democrats must not hide behind a procedural loss on immigration reform - The Boston Globe
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