On May 14, the House of Representatives stripped language from the Defense Department Authorization bill that would have pushed the Secretary of Defense to consider allowing undocumented immigrants to serve in the military.

The provision would have applied to those eligible for a path to citizenship under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — the group known as DREAMers, after the Development, Relief, and Education for Alient Minors (DREAM) Act.

The DREAM Act has been introduced several times in Congress but has failed to pass. It covers certain individuals who arrived in the United States as minors and meet other specific qualifications. Although DACA grants work permits, it does not allow DREAMers to enlist in the military.

Representative Ruben Gallego (AZ-D) introduced the new language in the form of an amendment to the defense spending bill when it was considered by the House Armed Services Committee. He said that Congress “shouldn’t let our broken immigration system stand in the way of our military’s recruitment goals.” Committee members approved the amendment, 33 to 30.

Before the defense bill came to the House floor, however, more than two dozen Republican Members, led by Representative Mo Brooks (AL-R), wrote a letter to the chair of the House Rules Committee saying that they would oppose the bill in its entirety if Representative Gallego’s amendment stayed in it. The letter pointed out that the House had previously voted to declare the Administration’s DACA program unconstitutional.

Representative Brooks then introduced the floor amendment removing the immigration provision. The amendment passed by a vote of 221 to 202, with all Democrats and 20 Republicans opposing it. Defending his proposal, Representative Gallego said, “These young people are Americans in every respect except on paper.”

One Republican supporter of Gallego’s amendment, Representative Jeff Denham (CA-R) has introduced the ENLIST Act (H.R. 1989), which would allow otherwise qualified undocumented immigrants brought to the United States by their parents to earn legal status through military service. The bill, which Representative Denham also introduced in the last Congress as both a stand-alone bill and an amendment to the defense spending bill, was referred to the House Armed Services Committee.

For more background on this topic, see the November 2010 issue of Congressional Digest, “The Dream Act.”