Californian Activists in DC Press Congress to Pass Legalization Bill for Long-Term Immigrants

WASHINGTON — With immigration emerging as a key, divisive issue in the presidential election, scores of immigrant advocates from California converged on Washington, D.C., this week to put a human face on their concerns and press Congress for a bill that would offer a path to citizenship for millions of long-term people without permanent legal status.

At a rally Tuesday morning outside the U.S. Capitol, advocates said that now that Vice President Kamala Harris is leading the Democratic ticket, they have new hope for pro-immigrant policies.

Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, or CHIRLA, said the fact that Harris is from California — and the daughter of immigrants herself — means she understands the immigrant community.

“She has stood with us in our worst moments,” including during the presidency of Donald Trump, Salas said. “When she knew that our families were fearful, she went to CHIRLA. She talked to our members. She told them that she would be a fighter for them. And she kept her promise.”

But Salas said she’s not waiting for Harris to win the presidency. Members of her group and hundreds of advocates from California and nearly a dozen other states plan to visit congressional offices this week to make the case for a bill that would update the 1929 Registry Act, a provision of immigration law that allowed long-term undocumented residents (mostly Europeans at the time) to gain lawful permanent status and eventually citizenship.

Over the decades, Congress has periodically updated the “registry date,” but not since 1986. The current cutoff means that immigrants are only eligible if they’ve lived in the U.S. continuously since 1972.

“So that’s what we’re asking: Update this registry law created to bring people out of the shadows,” Salas said. “We need to educate members of Congress and the public. A lot of people don’t even know that the registry law already exists.”

A Gallup poll this month found that a growing number of Americans — 55%, up from 41% last year — want immigration levels reduced, and three out of four consider the border a crisis or a major problem. However, a strong majority of Americans also say immigration is good for the country, and 70% want to let immigrants living in the U.S. illegally become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over time, a policy that has had consistent support for years.

However, in a closely divided Congress, with Republicans unified in their opposition to immigration reform, the bill has no chance of passage. The House bill, authored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren of San José, has 82 Democratic co-sponsors but no Republican backers. Similarly, the Senate version, authored by California Sen. Alex Padilla and with 10 Democratic co-sponsors, is stuck, as Democrats hold a narrow majority but lack a 60-vote supermajority to overcome Senate filibuster rules.

Advocates with CHIRLA said they hoped to persuade Central Valley Rep. David Valadao to support the bill. He’s a rare Republican who has previously supported bipartisan legalization bills. His office did not respond to KQED’s request for an interview.

Meanwhile, Trump is working to stir a fear of immigrants among voters and aiming to put Harris on the defensive on immigration, attacking her for high levels of unauthorized border crossings in his first television ad of the general election campaign, released this week.

“As border czar, Kamala threw open our borders that allowed 20 million illegal aliens to stampede into our country from all over the world,” Trump alleged at a July 24 campaign rally, greatly inflating the number of arrivals and falsely assigning Harris a role that was never hers. While President Joe Biden tasked Harris with tackling the root causes of immigration from Central America, she was not in charge of policing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Though Harris has a record of supporting long-time immigrants in the U.S., her campaign has indicated she will maintain Biden’s recent asylum restrictions that the administration credits with a sharp drop in border crossings in recent months that are being challenged in court by migrant advocates.

And though Congress is unlikely to take action on the registry bill or any other immigration legislation before the election, analysts say it makes sense that immigrant rights groups are now lobbying in Washington, D.C., to raise awareness of their demands.

Political science professor Fernando Guerra, who runs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, said advocates are positioning themselves — either to mount a strong defense against the actions of a second Trump presidency or to push Congress and a Harris administration for long-sought legalization.

“The emergence of Harris has propelled momentum on the Democratic side, and it’s also mobilizing advocates for all kinds of different policies and especially immigration, to begin to shape the narrative now,” Guerra said. “Being there today and beginning to shift the narrative can have an impact on what will be done in early 2025.”

At the rally, Blessing Roland-Magaji, 22, said she showed up to support the registry bill because it would offer a way to make a permanent home in the U.S. A recent Scripps College graduate who’ll start at Stanford Law School in the fall, Roland-Magaji said she was born in Ireland to Nigerian parents and has lived in the U.S. since she was 11 but without legal status.

“There are so many temporary solutions. DACA: I immigrated one year too late. When it comes to adjusting [immigration status] through family, I was too old,” she said.” There’s always bars for people who just want to be able to work and live here. I’ve almost been in the States longer than I was ever in Ireland. This is my home.”

For another California resident, the journey to the Capitol was motivated by raw pain.

Teresa Solís, 57, a health care aide from Santa Rosa, said she has lived in the U.S. for 24 years, working and raising her children in Sonoma County. For years, she has heard elected officials talk about making a path to citizenship for immigrants without permanent legal status like herself. But it has never happened. And the impact hit keenly early this year when her little sister was dying of cancer in Mexico, and Solís was unable to visit her to say goodbye.

“That’s why I bought my own ticket to come here,” she said, wiping away tears. “I’m here to fight, not just for me, but for everyone who’s had to go through something like this. It hurts so much, and I thought: ‘If I’m hurting, others are too.’ We need legalization.”