The House passed legislation Tuesday to provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers brought to the United States as children.

The bill — dubbed the Dream and Promise Act — was approved, 237-187, along largely partisan lines. Nearly all Democrats voted for the legislation, with five not voting. The Democratic majority was joined by seven Republicans.


In the closing minutes of the vote, several hundred pro-migrant attendees in the House gallery erupted in chants of “Sí, se puede“ and “Yes, we can“ — a familiar rallying cry of the immigrant rights movement.

The bill is the House Democratic majority's answer to President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda. Trump and his top officials have pressed Congress, unsuccessfully, in recent months for billions to build a border wall, and changes to asylum and detention laws to discourage the arrival of migrants from Central America.

The Dream and Promise Act carries a more welcoming message. The bill would allow an estimated 2.3 million undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to apply for legal status and eventual citizenship, according to an analysis by the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. The population eligible for legalization under the measure would include 673,000 people covered by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which Trump has sought to terminate.

In addition, the bill would offer legal status to more than 400,000 people covered by Temporary Protected Status, a humanitarian program that allows people to remain in the U.S. and work legally if their home countries suffer a natural disaster, armed conflict, or other extraordinary event. The measure also would legalize roughly 1,400 Liberian nationals covered by Deferred Enforced Departure, another humanitarian initiative.


Still, the Republican-controlled Senate appears unlikely to take up the measure, and the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a letter Monday that it “strongly opposes” the legislation and would recommend that the president veto it.

OMB said the bill “would only exacerbate illegal immigration and the exploitation of our immigration laws by incentivizing more illegal behavior.” It also cited concerns that the measure would increase budget deficits by more than $30 billion in public benefits that would become available to newly legalized immigrants.

Liberal groups countered that the measure would stimulate economic growth in the long term. The left-leaning Center for American Progress found in 2017 that a similar bill legalizing Dreamers would increase gross domestic product by $281 billion over 10 years.

Republican lawmakers echoed the Trump administration's position during speeches on the House floor Tuesday.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who represents a district that includes the Phoenix suburbs, called the legislation “a disgrace” and encouraged colleagues to vote it down.


"It does nothing to close loopholes or even enforce existing law,” he said.

Democratic lawmakers and immigrant rights groups touted the bill as both humane and beneficial to the U.S.

"There is widespread, bipartisan support across the country for protecting Dreamers,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the top Democratic on a Judiciary subcommittee that deals with immigration.

The GOP's opposition to the Dream and Promise Act puts it in opposition to the business lobby, which favors the bill's passage. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in a letter published Monday, urged House members to vote for the legislation, and Lofgren noted on the House floor Tuesday that more than 100 companies — including eBay, Hewlett-Packard and Chobani — recently announced support for the legislation.

"They support the bill because the United States will benefit economically from its passage,” she said.

In closing remarks before the vote, Democrats and Republicans sparred over whether the bill sufficiently limited the ability of suspected gang members to apply for legal status.

Republicans pressed — unsuccessfully — to add a provision that would have allowed the use of information about criminality, terrorist threats and gangs in immigration enforcement.

The legislation “should not give gang members a foothold in the U.S. by fast-tracking their green cards,” Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.) said on the floor.


Democrats countered that the bill already contained safeguards to keep criminals and gang members from obtaining legal status, including bars for serious criminal convictions and a provision that would allow the secretary of Homeland Security to reject candidates who presented a security threat.

Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) said that if Republicans were sincerely concerned about gang violence, they would have backed Democrat-led bills in previous years that dealt with that issue.

"I would ask my colleagues to spare me this false outrage,” he said. “At the end of the day, there is no question that no one is interested in allowing gang members to benefit.“

