House to Vote on Path to Citizenship for Young Immigrants, Legal Status for Farmworkers.

AFTER DECADES OF FAILED attempts at passing comprehensive immigration reform and a tepid response to President Joe Biden's marquee bill on the issue, congressional Democrats are now focusing on narrower, more tailored measures they hope will eventually lead to wide scale reform.

The House this week will vote on a pair of immigration measures that are expected to pass the chamber with bipartisan support but will likely face roadblocks in the Senate. The bills are Democrats' first attempts under Biden to see what progress, if any, they can make on immigration in such a closely divided Congress.

The first bill, dubbed The American Dream and Promise Act, would provide a pathway to citizenship for young immigrants brought to the country illegally as young children as well as for immigrants in the country with temporary protected status or other protections. If passed, the measure would affect some 4.4 million immigrants, according to an estimate from the nonprofit Migration Policy Institute. Seven Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the measure in 2019.

Democrats will also bring to a vote the Farm Modernization Workforce Act, a measure that would provide a pathway to legal status and permanent residency for migrant farmworkers while reforming the H-2A agricultural visa program and strengthening requirements for E-Verify, an electronic system used to verify workers' legal status. There are 1.2 million farmworkers in the U.S. illegally, according to a 2016 estimate. In 2019, 34 Republicans backed the bill, which has broad Democratic support.

Democrats have said that they are open to taking all possible avenues to enact immigration reform while some continue to try to drum up support for Biden's U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for some 11 million immigrants currently in the country illegally. Biden's measure has had a wary reception from moderate Democrats and is a non-starter among Senate Republicans.

The two measures slated to be voted on by the House this week are not likely to advance in the Senate, which is divided 50-50 with Democrats in the majority thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris's tie-breaking vote. Most bills need the support of 60 senators to overcome a procedural obstacle and advance to a floor vote.