Kamala Harris is going all in on immigration reform.

On Wednesday, the 2020 contender will introduce legislation with Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-Nev.) that would make Dreamers eligible to work as staffers or interns in Congress. It’s the latest move by the California Democrat to seize on an issue that her rival Beto O’Rourke has made his calling card — and to advocate for a Democratic constituency that’s often reduced to a congressional bargaining chip.


Harris’ proposal, which would lift what immigrant-rights supporters consider to be a mean-spirited ban on Dreamers working in Congress, comes after Harris traveled to Latino-heavy Nevada this week for her second visit there as a presidential candidate. She also went to Texas recently, in part to build support among Latino voters.

For Harris, the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India whose campaign has distributed headsets at rallies to translate her speeches into Spanish, the southwestern sojourns are also an attempt to blunt O’Rourke, a fluent Spanish speaker who has gone toe-to-toe with Donald Trump on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump’s relentless focus on immigration has given Democrats an early opening to try to distinguish themselves beyond the usual support for a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, individuals who are undocumented and arrived to the United States as children. Julián Castro, the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, on Tuesday outlined his own plan for immigration reform, which his campaign described as “first-in-the-field.” In addition to creating a pathway to citizenship, his plan also would reform immigration enforcem