This Week in DC
The Senate is set to approve President Joe Biden’s nominees for Interior secretary and U.S. Trade Representative this week, while the House looks to jump-start a congressional debate over immigration reform and farm labor.
The House will vote on a pair of immigration bills, including the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would provide a path to legal status for undocumented agricultural workers and expand the H-2A visa program; the House passed the bill in 2019, but it went nowhere in the Senate, then controlled by Republicans.
House Democratic leaders hope to spur a Senate debate on immigration by moving both the FWMA and the second bill, which would provide a path to citizenship to Dreamers, immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children and now have legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Announcing plans for the debate, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the bills were designed to fix a “broken immigration system.”
The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and other Republicans have said immigration legislation is unlikely to go anywhere in the Senate until the border is first secured against illegal crossings. "It's gonna be really hard to get a bipartisan bill put together on anything that has a legalization component until you stop the flow," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. told reporters.
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The House will vote on a pair of immigration bills, including the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would provide a path to legal status for undocumented agricultural workers and expand the H-2A visa program; the House passed the bill in 2019, but it went nowhere in the Senate, then controlled by Republicans.
House Democratic leaders hope to spur a Senate debate on immigration by moving both the FWMA and the second bill, which would provide a path to citizenship to Dreamers, immigrants who were brought to the country illegally as children and now have legal status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Announcing plans for the debate, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the bills were designed to fix a “broken immigration system.”
The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and other Republicans have said immigration legislation is unlikely to go anywhere in the Senate until the border is first secured against illegal crossings. "It's gonna be really hard to get a bipartisan bill put together on anything that has a legalization component until you stop the flow," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. told reporters.
Click Here to read more.