Press Releases

In an effort to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform in the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Suzan DelBene today co-sponsored new reform legislation. DelBene is leading the effort with Representative Joe Garcia (FL-26), Representative Judy Chu (CA-27), Representative Jared Polis (CO-02) and Representative Steven Horsford (NV-04).

“Immigration reform is critical to the people and economy of the 1^st Congressional District and Washington state. In order to grow our economy and create jobs, we must take a comprehensive approach to immigration reform. We can’t settle for a piece-meal approach. Our system today has so many moving parts that if we just tweak policy in one narrow area, it will create unintended consequences in other areas,” said DelBene. “There is tremendous support for comprehensive immigration reform from the business community, farmers, faith leaders, law enforcement and the broader American public because of the positive impact it will have on our country and economy. I urge my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to support this bill.”

Called the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, DelBene’s bill reflects the bipartisan Senate bill and includes provisions to strengthen border security that passed with unanimous, bipartisan support from the House Homeland Security Committee earlier this summer. Specifically, the bill:

• Secures our borders, protects our workers, unites families, and offers hardworking immigrants an earned pathway to citizenship.
• Contains the same language from the bipartisan Senate bill that reforms our visa programs and interior enforcement. 
• Includes a bipartisan border-security bill that garnered unanimous approval from the House Homeland Security Committee.

A one page summary of the bill can be found HERE, and a larger section by section summary of the bill can be found HERE.

In June, the Senate, in an overwhelming bipartisan vote, passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Since then, House leaders have promised to take up immigration reform, but to date they have failed to introduce their own proposals for comprehensive reform or take up the Senate’s bill. The bill introduced today by DelBene represents an effort to reboot the debate in the House and spur action on immigration reform.