San Jose City Councilmembers passed a resolution surrounding immigration reform with an 11-0 unanimous vote during a hybrid meeting at city hall Tuesday.
The resolution urges the U.S. Congress to preserve funding for comprehensive immigration reform and pro-immigrant policies including pathways to citizenship through budget reconciliation.
Budget reconciliation gets legislation passed in the Senate by majority vote and only policies that change U.S. spending or revenues can be included in it, according to The House Budget Committee Democratic Caucus website.
District 7 Councilmember Maya Esparza, who brought the resolution forward, said San Jose has a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to create a nationwide citizenship pathway for 11 million undocumented immigrants.
“[They] are our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, our family,” Esparza said during the meeting. “They are also many of our central workers, who have put themselves in harm's way to keep our society running during this pandemic.”
She said as the 10th largest U.S. city, San Jose has a responsibility to speak up on the nationwide issue.
Esparza said immigration reform is also a local issue for the city’s 25,000 undocumented immigrants.
“So many of them have worked tirelessly to build a better life for themselves and their children and to achieve the American dream,” she said. “Let there be no doubt, they are an integral part of our community here in San Jose. COVID-19 has laid bare the stark inequities that existed long before the pandemic.”
Democrats are finishing a deal with Senate parliamentarians that would add immigration reform to their social spending bill before it moves to the House, according to a Tuesday Washington Post article.
The social spending bill, or President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better act, includes a framework regarding fighting climate change, expanding medicare, funding education programs and housing, healthcare and immigration provisions, according to a Thursday CBS News article.
Lyna Nguyen, Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN) fellow, said she’s concerned about the Democrats’ proposal regarding federal immigration policies because it excludes many immigrants.
SIREN is a coalition of immigrant rights activists that aim to empower low-income immigrants and refugees through developments of community education and legal services, according to its website.
“We have an immigrant community and strong immigrant protection in San Jose. We must continue to support all immigrants and the only way to solve the immigration problem is to include everyone,” Nguyen said during the public comment section of the meeting. “I stand with the immigrant community because my parents are refugees from Vietnam and I watched them sacrifice a lot to give me and my siblings a better life.”
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said the city will be pushing for successive efforts with its latest resolution but there may be some “procedural obstacles” that it won’t be able to overcome.
The “procedural thicket” the Democrats are in is because they’re using budget reconciliation to pass the immigration reform policy, according to the Washington Post article.
That prevents the legislation from being filibustered in the Senate but also limits what can be included in the bill, according to the same article.
San Jose native Araceli Rueda said the new federal proposal isn’t enough.
“There's a lot of children in San Jose that live with that fear that their parents might be taken away. Their parents contribute to the economy,” Rueda said during public comment. “When they pay their taxes, they try to stay as low key as possible to [stay] out of trouble. A pathway to citizenship is something that is owed to the undocumented community.”
