How viable is it that there will be immigration reform in the final weeks of Congress?

In July, House Democrats introduced a new bill titled “Renewal of the Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929,” which would give eight million immigrants a path to citizenship. In September, Democratic Senator Alex Padilla introduced this same bill in the Senate.

The elections have just passed and the Republicans won the seats enough to be a majority in the House of Representatives, and the The Democrats have a majority in the Senate.

After being out of session for several weeks campaigning, the representatives returned to Washington to continue their work for the rest of the legislative year, and since it is the last period of majority rule of the Democrats in both the House and the Senate, the agenda of these last months is full of different proposals.

There is funding from the government to avoid a shutdown before the end of the year (although some estimates they say the deadline is towards the third quarter of 2023); the annual defense policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization (NDAA) was passed; and a bill to make it more difficult to annul a confirmed presidential election (in response to the efforts of the former president donald trump to block the results of the 2020 elections and beyond caused the capitol rebellion).

Another bill that has echoes in the halls is the protection of marriage between people of the same sex, since in September the majority leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, promised to vote on the subject, although a date has not yet been set.

Among all these proposals, immigrant organizations and advocacy groups they traveled to Washington last week for demand immigration reform. On July 20, the Democrats in the House of Representatives presented a new bill entitled “Renewal of the Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929” (Renewal of the provisions of the Migration Act 1929), which would provide a path to citizenship for eight million immigrants. In September, this same bill was present in the Senate at the hands of the Democratic Senator, Alex Padilla.

The Coalition for Immigrant Human Rights (CHIRLA) was involved on both occasions, so to talk about what to expect these days on the issue of immigration, we invited the executive director of CHIRLA, Angélica Salas.