Senate Parliamentarian Rules Against Immigration Reform Again

With the latest issued guidance from the Senate Parliamentarian rejecting Democrats' attempts to preserve un-used green cards, nearly 80,000 permits are set to go to waste.

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Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has ruled against the Democrats in their third attempt to attach immigration reform provisions to their nearly $2 trillion social spending bill. Lawmakers have been blocked from including protections for undocumented people in the US for months, and this latest effort marked the third attempt at including these reforms.

This third attempt sought to recover green cards for immigrants that have gone unused in the United States in the years since 1992, which would make unused family-based or employment-based visas available in an effort to reduce immigration backlogs. Under current law, any allotted green cards not issued by the end of the year become unavailable for the following year. In 2021, the US failed to issue roughly 80,000 green cards due to processing delays — those cards have now been erased.

Another provision would have allowed people who have been waiting on green cards for at least two years to pay additional fees to bypass certain annual and per-country limitations, allowing for permanent residency much faster. The plan also sought to reverse many of the detrimental actions that stem from Trump-era travel bans by preserving green cards for diversity visa winners from countries with low levels of immigration to the US.

Democrats argued that the work permits and other provisions would have a budgetary impact, a requirement under Senate rules for inclusion in the reconciliation process. MacDonough previously ruled against Democrats twice, back in September of this year, on provisions that included immigration reform plans within the Build Back Better plan.