In early June, House Republicans voted to defund an Obama administration program deferring deportation procedures for young undocumented immigrants. Now their leadership is working on a bill which would put those same young people on the path to citizenship. The House's Republican majority has dug in their heels on comprehensive reform, instead drawing up four small bills on immigration reflecting the priorities of its deeply conservative members. And on Monday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) released a statement saying the hearing was another part of the House's piecemeal approach on immigration reform.
"These children came here through no fault of their own and many of them know no other home than the United States," he said in the statement. "Any successful immigration reform plan must improve our legal immigration programs, strengthen border security and the interior enforcement of our immigration laws, and find a way to fairly deal with those who are currently in the country unlawfully."
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But immigrant advocacy groups demand more than what the House committee will consider. "We will not stand for anything that separates our families," Greisa Martinez told Yahoo! News on Monday. Martinez is an organizer with United We Dream, the nation's biggest group advocating for the rights of young undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children. The group is pushing for comprehensive legislation which would knock out the problem of America's backlogged visa system and put undocumented immigrants - including those who came as adults - on the path to citizenship in one fell swoop. "For someone to ask me to leave [my mother] behind, to say she's unworthy of citizenship, it's un-American," Martinez said.
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The managing director of the group, Cristina Jimenez, expressed outrage to reporters during a conference call on Monday, saying the Kids Act would "condemn our parents and our families to second-class status."
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Citizenship for young people who grew up in the US after being brought there illegally as children is one of the most consistently popular immigration reform ideas among the American public. It's as yet unclear, however, what kind of support the legislation might receive among the Republican majority in the House. Steve King, an Iowa representative who often serves as a barometer of the most conservative sentiments in the House, has come out against it, saying, "it's never the kids fault, but that's not a reason to sacrifice the rule of law. All of us, our parents did a lot of right things, and they made some mistakes. We're the beneficiaries of our parents' good decisions and we pay the price of our parents' bad decisions. So why would we exempt a class of people for that?"
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