Bill for Mixed Status Families Passes House Committee

The American Families United Act would help keep mixed-status families together, while the Veterans Service Recognition Act would fast-track citizenship for immigrants who serve in the U.S. military and help bring home veterans who have been deported.

The mixed-status families bill has 71 bipartisan cosponsors after being introduced in April 2021 by Reps. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) and David Valadao (D-TX).

“It’s a high priority for me,” Escobar told Latino Rebels in April before meeting with members of the Problem Solvers Caucus to get Republican votes. “If I can get Republicans to support it, it might be more likely to move forward.”

The mixed-status families legislation allows federal law enforcement agencies to exercise discretion on a case-by-case basis by declining to deport or bar certain immigrants from entering the country. It also removes the requirement that a U.S. citizen parent must be present in the country for five years before giving birth for their child to be granted birthright citizenship.

“Americans in mixed-status families experience trauma every day related to their family member’s immigration case,” said Kali Pliego, president of American Families United, an organization that advocates for the bill, in a press release. “We have families who have been forcefully separated due to a visa denial, despite immediate family ties to U.S. citizens. We have whole families, including American children, who have uprooted their lives in America to live somewhere else to keep their family intact. And we have U.S. citizen spouses and children who live in fear that the U.S. government will deport their loved one.”

The bill focusing on immigrant veterans would allow noncitizens to file for permanent residency as early as basic training when they sign up to serve in the U.S. military. It would also allow some veterans who have been deported to return to the United States if they haven’t committed serious crimes.

“As we discussed at our hearing last month in the Immigration Subcommittee, immigrants have served in the U.S. armed forces in every major conflict since the Revolutionary War. Every day, 45,000 immigrants actively serving in the U.S. armed forces risk their lives in support of our country,” said House Judiciary chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in a press release.

 

Republican- Trump Immigration Bills Begin to Move Through House

H.R. 3003 – No Sanctuary for Criminals Act  STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY   H.R. 3003 – No Sanctuary for Criminals Act

Rep. Goodlatte, R-VA, and nine cosponsors)

The Administration strongly supports House passage of H.R. 3003, the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act. This bill would ensure that American taxpayers are not subsidizing States and localities that work to affirmatively thwart Federal law enforcement efforts.

For States or localities determined to be in violation of Federal law, H.R. 3003 would restrict their eligibility to receive certain Department of Justice or Department of Homeland Security grants. Instead, under this bill, those grant funds would be reallocated to States and localities that comply with Federal law. Additionally, this bill would provide for more robust detention of criminal aliens. The Administration is committed to strengthening enforcement of our Nation’s immigration laws in order to improve national security and public safety. This legislation is critical to these efforts.

If H.R. 3003 were presented to the President in its current form, his advisors would recommend that he sign the bill into law.

TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION SELL: The House is expected to take up two immigration bills today, one that would crack down on so-called sanctuary cities and another that would increase penalties for people who reenter the U.S. multiple times after a deportation. 

President Donald Trump threw his support behind both bills this week. On Wednesday, Trump met at the White House with victims of crimes allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants and lauded the Republican lawmakers who crafted the legislation, including House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.). The White House later issued a press release that tallied Trump's accomplishments in the enforcement area, from increased arrests to (yet unfulfilled) plans to build a border wall.

The bills should sail through the Republican-controlled House, but odds are that's as far as they will go. In recent years, House Republicans have ushered through similar bills only to see them go nowhere in the Senate, where Democrats would shoot them down. Morning Shift consulted three Senate Democratic aides who all said they expect to see the same thing happen this time. Republicans will "run into a resistance wall if they try to jam these two pieces through," one aide said. Read the "No Sanctuary for Criminals Act" here and "Kate's Law" here.

Gutierrez: This is about children

Republicans seek to defund DACA.