On Sunday, Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough dashed the hopes of Democrats eager to move ahead with a long-overdue overhaul of the nation's immigration system, ruling that plans for a permanent resident status and path to citizenship for some 8 million undocumented immigrants was "not appropriate for inclusion in reconciliation." Democrats had attempted to include the provision in an upcoming reconciliation bill; the budgetary process allows certain bills to be passed with a simple majority, rather than the Senate's customary 60-vote threshold, so long as they meet certain spending and revenue criteria.
MacDonough's ruling, conventional wisdom says, means that Democrats will have to push through any sort of immigration reform through the usual legislative motions. That means they'll likely run into agenda-ending opposition from Senate Republicans, who have spent the past four years (and beyond) railing against any law that could be seen as even remotely permissive to the undocumented community.
