Contributor, The Hill
Democrats suffered a major blow when the Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, decided that they could not include immigration provisions in their $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill. According to MacDonough, the effect that the immigration provisions would have on the budget would be incidental to their overall policy effect.
The rejected provisions would have provided legalization for undocumented immigrants who were brought here illegally as children, often called “Dreamers;” undocumented immigrants with Temporary Protected Status; and undocumented essential workers. This would have made lawful status available to more than 8 million undocumented immigrants.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) claims that there is another option, which is to narrow the immigration reform provisions such that Democrats can navigate it through the Senate’s Byzantine rules. He thinks this can be done with an update to the registry provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
Registry is a process that permits undocumented immigrants to become lawful permanent residents (green card holders) on the basis of their long-standing presence in the country, regardless of their status or the way they entered the country.
I don’t think updating the registry provision will be acceptable to MacDonough either — It’s just another way to legalize undocumented immigrants.
But it might be possible to move a registry update through the regular legislative process. The registry process has been in place for nearly a century. It reflects our nation’s historical sense of fairness to allow undocumented immigrants who have lived in the country for a very long time an opportunity to obtain legal status, and it hasn’t been updated since 1986.
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Read Nolan’s complete article at the link.
Nolan’s article was highlighted in ImmigrationProf Blog. https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2021/09/the-clamor-for-updating-registry-continues.html
As Dean Kevin Johnson noted in his ImmigrationProf post, Nolan correctly predicted that the Parliamentarian would reject registry as part of budget reconciliation. But, the possibility for bipartisan legislation doesn’t end there.
Any time we have Nolan and ImmigrationProf Blog resident expert Professor Kit Johnson talking about the same possible solution, folks in Congress on both sides should wake up and take notice! Doesn’t mean they will. But they should think about proposed solutions from thoughtful subject matter experts, who have been involved in the process for years, and who often come at problem-solving from different angles.
Associate Professor of Law
University of Oklahoma Law School
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
08-29-21