Norton Calls for Passage of Clean Bills to Keep Families Together and Protect Dreamers after House Rejects Ultra-Conservative Immigration Bill

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) today released the following statement after the House of Representatives voted down the ultra-conservative immigration bill introduced by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and could not yet get the votes on a separate Republican immigration bill cobbled together by Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI). Norton is an original cosponsor of the Keep Families Together Act (H.R. 6135) and a cosponsor of the DREAM Act (H.R. 3440).

"The House's failure to pass this ultra-conservative immigration bill must not result in passage of Speaker Ryan's so-called compromise bill, which remains a highly anti-immigrant bill that fails to stop family separation, leaves DREAMers behind, cuts legal immigration, denies asylum seekers, funds President Trump's border wall and militarizes the border. These ‘show' bills will not help Republicans in the House, and especially not in the Senate, convince Americans that this is what immigration reform looks like. Only clean bills have any chance of passage. The Keep Families Together Act and the DREAM Act would both easily pass the House, keeping children from being torn from their parents and providing a permanent legislative fix to protect the nation's DREAMers, including the nearly 800 who live in the nation's capital."