On Friday, the House of Representatives officially passed the 2 trillion
dollar build back better reconciliation bill by a vote of 220 to 213,
which includes immigration provisions that will impact the lives of millions.
Stay tuned until the end
because we are going to take a look at what this means for immigrants,
what the next steps are for the bill, and when we can expect
the Senate parliamentarian to give a decision on the provisions.
By the way, I worked very quickly to get this video done for you,
so please be sure to like this video so that others get a chance to see it.
OK, so let's take a look to see what took so long for the House to pass this bill.
If you recall from my previous video, House progressives agreed to pass a 1
trillion dollar infrastructure bill, which was their only leverage to ensure
moderate Democrats like Joe Manchin didn't water the bill down any further.
Sure enough, after the infrastructure bill passed, Congress
moderates started to raise concerns about the cost of the build back better plan
and insisted on waiting for the official scoring from the Congressional Budget
Office, which would detail the costs associated with it.
On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office
finally released their cost estimate, finding that the bill would increase
the federal deficit budget by $160 billion over the next ten years,
which is low enough to be acceptable by moderate Democrats.
Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi immediately moved to vote on the bill Thursday evening.
But Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California took the floor and
voiced his opposition for more than eight hours, speaking until 5:00 a.m.
on Friday.
Fortunately, despite their lack of sleep, House Democrats convened three hours
later and overwhelmingly voted to pass the bill.
So what does this mean for immigrants?
The Build Back Better bill includes the most extensive immigration reform package
to be reviewed by Congress in 35 years, including the "parole in place" plan,
visa recapture and super fees to eliminate the per country visa caps.
It would grant undocumented people who were in the U.S.
before January 1st, 2011, up to ten years of work authorization
and deportation protections, which is approximately 7 million people.
After filing an application, paying a fee and passing a background check,
they would be able to get work
permits, permission to travel abroad and state driver's licenses.
Work permits would be valid for five years and could be extended
through September 2031.
Of those 7 million undocumented individuals who qualify, approximately
3 million would become eligible to file for legal permanent residence,
which is the first step towards citizenship.
The bill also includes a visa recapture, which would restore more than 400,000
employment based and family based green cards that have gone unused
since 1992 and would protect recent diversity
visa winners who were unable to process their visa applications.
It also creates what is being called a super fee, which allows those
who have been waiting in the visa backlog for more than two years
to pay a fee, waive their country's visa cap and adjust their status.
This fee is 5000 for employment based green cards
and 2500 for family based green cards.
This bill also includes an increase in immigration application
fees in order to fund a 2.8 billion
dollar increase in the USCIS budget, which will be necessary
in order for them to increase the staff and reduce the visa backlog.
I will continue to bring you regular updates as news becomes
available on these provisions and other important immigration news,
so be sure to subscribe to my channel to keep up to date.
So now that the bill has passed,
what can we expect for the Senate and for it to be voted into law?
Congress starts its Thanksgiving break next week, which means there
likely won't be any additional progress until December.
There are also lots of obstacles in the Senate
that will need to be addressed before the bill can be voted
on, such as the parliamentarian making her decision, moderate Democrats
like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema objecting to specific provisions
and competing legislative priorities like the upcoming National Defense Bill.
The next update will likely be from the Senate parliamentarian
Elizabeth McDonough,
who was reportedly going to finish the process
of reviewing the provisions this week
but due to the recess, will likely wait until the first week of December.
As most of you know, McDonough rejected the first two
pathway to citizenship proposals that were submitted to her,
so everyone is very anxious to hear what she has to say about Plan C.
In addition, according to the CBO report released on Thursday,
the immigration provisions in the Build Back Better bill are expected
to raise deficits by around $111 billion over the next decade
and another $311.9 billion in the following decade,
which could potentially violate the Byrd rule that all provisions
must pass in order to be included in budget reconciliation.
I'll be sure to let you know as soon as we have more details.
Despite the fact that the immigration provisions in the bill haven't
significantly scaled back
from the original proposal and still face a tough road ahead, if they pass,
it will be a historic step forward for immigration in America.
In response to the bill's progress, Democratic Texas Representative
Veronica Escobar issued a statement saying: "While the immigration reform
is absolutely inadequate, we have to get that across the goal line.
We have to.
That would provide the ability for so many of these incredible people
to be able to get to work every day without fear of retaliation
and to be able to live without fear of deportation.
And in fact, for millions of them, it would allow them the important steps
towards stabilizing their situation and hopefully at some point
getting them fully protected through a pathway to citizenship.
It buys Congress more time so that we can fulfill our obligation
and ensure that we give them the path to citizenship that they deserve."
So what do you think?
Will all these immigration provisions make its way through Congress?
Leave me a comment below, and if you want to hear more about what
the parliamentarian's decision on these immigration provisions is likely to be,
I will put another one of my videos here to explain how the "parole in place" plan
is likely to be considered different from the previous two
pathways to citizenship she already rejected.
Click here to watch this video and I'll see you there!