House ignores border surge & jobs recession in approving amnesty and guest worker expansion

Despite a border crisis driven by Pres. Biden's promise of a mass amnesty, House Democrats approved two bills today that would grant amnesty to more than 5 million illegal aliens. The bills would also add millions of more, mostly low-skilled, foreign workers through an expansion of the agricultural guest worker program and chain migration while millions of Americans remain jobless as a result of the pandemic.

Both bills -- the American Dream and Promise Act (H.R. 6) and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act (H.R. 1603) -- passed in the previous Congress, so today's votes aren't a major surprise. Still, there was some hope that the ongoing border surge and current unemployment situation would cause House Leaders to rethink their decision to bring the bills to the floor this week.

But not only did they move forward with their plans, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee which has jurisdiction over immigration, claimed that the real crisis is a shortage of workers that could be alleviated by passage of the Dream Act.

"[W]e do have a crisis in this country. The crisis consists of a shortage of workers. As our population -- our birth rate goes down, as our aging goes up, we have fewer and fewer workers. ...

"Passage of H.R. 6 is long overdue. Today's vote will dictate the millions of recipients and greatly help the economy of this country."

-- Rep. Jerry Nadler

The American Dream and Promise Act passed by a 228-to-197 margin with 9 Republicans joining the Democrats in support of the measure.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act passed by a 247-to-174 margin with 30 Republicans joining all but 1 Democrat in support.

Due to the timing of the votes, official roll calls won't be available until tomorrow morning. We'll have a full breakdown in tomorrow's newsletter plus links to actions that you can take in response to how your U.S. Representative voted.

Thanks to everyone who made phone calls or sent messages to Congress over the last few weeks. While the result was not what we had hoped, your activism did have an impact evidenced by many of the floor speeches made by the Members during today's session.

Chris Chmielenski NumbersUSA Deputy Director