Far-left darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a handful of other progressive lawmakers joined in a protest outside the US Capitol on Tuesday, demanding that Democratic leadership ignore their parliamentarian and include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants in the spending bill being quarreled over in the Senate.
“The Senate needs to step up, override the parliamentarian, okay. The parliamentarian is not elected. It is not an elected position, and the parliamentarian has been overridden and dismissed in the past,” she said.
Calling it a “ventana de oportunidad” – Spanish for “window of opportunity,” Ocasio Cortez said, “Our demand is for the Senate to override the parliamentarian, include a full path to citizenship, and send it back to the House.”
Many leftist Democrats think that the spending bill, for which Democratic leadership are trying to use the reconciliation process to pass, is indeed a “ventana de oporunidad” for immigration reform because the reconciliation process allows Democrats to pass a bill without a single GOP vote, meaning they could theoretically overhaul the entire immigration process without any Republican support.
However, bills passed under reconciliation are subject to the “Byrd Rule,” which bars provisions that do not have a fiscal impact from being included in the bill. Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough decided what falls under the Byrd Rule and what doesn’t.
McDonough has ruled that immigration reform cannot be jammed into this spending bill, and so far, Democratic leadership has been willing to abide by her ruling, though they can technically either ignore her or fire her.
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3 Responses
schumer is so petrified of her that he will do what she says.
Many of these illegal immigrants were brought to the US involutarily as children and some have no memory of the country of which they are citizens. Most are Mexican nationals and many don’t even speak Spanish. They should be welcomed as US citizens.
That aid, McDonough is right. This has nothing to do with budgetary matters.
And amnesty without other significant changes in US immigration law will not solve the problems. We need substantially greater immigration quotas than we have had in the past, particularly from China, India, the Philippines, and Mexico. The US has a labor shortage and immigrants can help the US to address that.
Since she knows it has no chance of passing the Senate, she can ask for the moon (and score points with her supporters) without risk of creating any real world problems.
Given that most of the “illegal” immigrants are hard working and law abiding, and given that the US has a serious labor shortage for unskilled and semi-skilled workers, it is inevitable that once the two parties stop yelling at other they will enact legislation to turn most of the “illegals” into tax paying workers.