Joe Biden knows a big f#*king deal when he sees one. On Thursday, Democrats in Congress introduced the first major immigration overhaul since the Reagan administration. The 353-page U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 announced on Biden’s first day in office would provide 11 million undocumented residents an eight-year path to citizenship.
With Democrats’ five-vote margin in the House and a 60-vote threshold for advancing legislation in the Senate (Democrats have 50, in theory), the bill faces an uphill climb reports CNN. The administration is willing to pass it as one bill or to address it in pieces, if necessary.
“Even though I support full, comprehensive immigration reform, I’m ready to move on piecemeal, because I don’t want to end up with good intentions on my hands and not have anything,” said Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar tells the Associated Press. “I’d rather have progress.”
AP continues:
“I know what it’s like to lose on big bills and small bills. The fear that people have experienced in the last four years deserves every single opportunity, every single bill to remedy,” said Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director for United We Dream, an immigration advocacy group.
“The biggest thing here is that we’re going to get something across the finish line, because not doing so is not an option.”
We Are Home stated in its press release welcoming the legislation:
“We applaud today’s actions and will continue working in partnership with the Biden administration and Congress to expend every resource available, including all immediately available legislative vehicles, to advance this bill and others. Immediately. The We Are Home campaign is committed to delivering a path to citizenship to the millions who have been waiting in the frontlines. We will not go back to our communities empty handed.”
Lorella Praeli, president of Community Change Action, feels the same. She told MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” Thursday the bill is groundbreaking [timestamp 38:55]:
“It addresses the root causes of migration from Central America. On border, it signals a shift away from border security framework to really a border management framework. Now, the crucial, crucial paradigm shift here [is] the bill doesn’t include new enforcement as a trade-off. This is a sea change from proposals we’ve seen in the past. Legalization coupled with enforcement is a failed strategy, and it’s morally indefensible. And I commend President Biden and the Democrats for finally abandoning it.”
But like Rosas, Praeli believes failure now is not an option. In 2010, the movement could not even get all Democrats in the Senate on board with The Dream Act:
“A good faith attempt here is not going to cut it. You can’t win the elections — you can’t do it because low-income people of color, because Latinos and immigrant voters delivered for you — and then come home empty-handed or tell us, we tried.”
Praeli suggested moving forward now is about strategy. “We’re not holding out for Republicans,” she says, who as a party have shown themselves “fundamentally opposed to the multiracial democracy that we seek to build.”
“We do not have the luxury in our movement of performing gestures of bipartisanship with actors who we know are acting in bad faith,” Praeli continued, adding a warning for Democrats.
“It is solely within their power to either secure a historic win for immigrants or once again fail us. That’s really the question here.”
So, not only strategy on advancing immigration is at issue. With immigrant advocates flexing organizational muscles developed over decades, the pressure to use “every single opportunity” and all “available legislative vehicles” to advance this bill, the pressure on Democrats to eliminate the filibuster just stepped up a few notches. Without saying so, Biden too just turned the screws on Senate Democrats.