Biden advocates passing immigration reform with only Democratic votes

The president of the United States, Joe Biden, supported this Thursday that the Democrats approve their immigration reform, now stalled in Congress, through a legislative mechanism known as reconciliation that allows them to do without the Republicans.

To do this, Democrats have to include massive regularization within a $ 3.5 trillion social spending package that Republicans oppose en bloc.

Reconciliation is an extraordinary legislative mechanism that allows the approval of economic bills with a simple majority of 50 votes, exactly those that Democrats have in the Senate, instead of the 60 that are normally required.

Biden made this announcement after meeting at the White House with Vice President Kamala Harris and a group of Democratic lawmakers who are pushing for immigration reform in Congress.

Biden and Harris "expressed strong support for including immigration reform in the upcoming reconciliation legislation," the White House said in a statement.

The president said that in this way, various immigrant groups will be able to "obtain long-awaited paths to citizenship."

The groups Biden cited are undocumented youth known as "dreamers" or "dreamers," beneficiaries of various Temporary Protected Status or TPS, agricultural workers and essential workers.

Biden presented shortly after coming to power his immigration reform bill with which he sought to regularize some 11 million undocumented immigrants.

However, after 6 months, both immigration reform and most of Biden's legislative agenda are blocked in the Senate by the requirement of 60 votes, which forces him to obtain the support of at least 10 Republicans for any project.