Democrats blocked from including immigration in $3.5-trillion package

The Senate is split 50-50 between the two parties

The Senate parliamentarian has blocked Democrats from including a plan to provide legal status to as many as 8 million undocumented immigrants in the package of legislation encompassing US President Joe Biden’s economic agenda.

Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough issued an opinion Sunday that the broad and long-stalled immigration overhaul doesn’t qualify for inclusion in a massive tax and spending plan under the Senate rules that Democrats are using to bypass a Republican filibuster. The parliamentarian said the proposal by Democrats is a policy change that “substantially outweighs” the budgetary impact of that change, effectively finding it out of bounds under Senate rules.