When the House passed their Build Back Better bill last week, they included a compromise immigration proposal to establish legal protections for millions of immigrants. What’s missing from that provision is a path to citizenship, and 91 House Democrats are encouraging the Senate to get that back in the bill.

The effort is led by Democratic Reps. Jesús García (Illinois), Lou Correa (California), Adriano Espaillat (NY), Grace Meng (NY), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY). They have written to Senate leadership to request they do it. “The House version of the BBB Act limits relief for certain undocumented individuals to a five-year parole status, yet another form of temporary reprieve. We now write to urge you and the rest of our colleagues in the Senate to reinstate a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, TPS [temporary protected status] holders, farm workers, and essential workers in the Senate’s version of the reconciliation bill,” wrote the lawmakers. The letter is addressed to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, President Pro Tempore Pat Leahy, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin.

This follows last month’s request when Senate Democrats asked they overrule a likely opinion from the parliamentarian that would preclude permanent relief. “As you know, the role of the Parliamentarian is an advisory one, and the opinion of the Parliamentarian is not binding,” they told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer last month. They noted that “there is precedent of the Presiding Officer disregarding the opinion of the Senate Parliamentarian.”

They make their case in the letter sent Monday. “The reconciliation bill is an especially suitable vehicle for providing this relief,” they write. “One need look no further than previous CBO scores for the same proposal to know that providing a pathway to citizenship would have a massive budgetary impact.” Budget reconciliation is the only means, as of now, by which Democrats can pass substantive legislation because it is not subject to the filibuster. Absent an agreement from a few Democratic senators to end the filibuster, this is the only game in town for fulfilling a decades-long promise.

“[W]hen Congress promises ‘immigration reform,’ as it has done throughout the negotiation process, our party must fully deliver on that promise,” the House lawmakers write. “For decades, immigrants have sought relief from the precarity of jumping from one temporary status to another in the only country they can call home. Another temporary status would merely extend this precarity.”

This is a roughly $2 trillion bill, which includes the half-loaf of parole for immigrants, encompasses elements of President Joe Biden’s initial American Families and American Jobs plans with programs to address climate change, universal preschool, paid family and medical leave, an extension of the Child Tax Credit as well as extensions for the Earned Income Credit, and the Child and Dependent Care Credit. The original bill included a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants—recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program—and farmworkers, essential workers, and people with Temporary Protected Status. It is probably the only chance Democrats have of fulfilling the years-long promise.

The Senate can do that. The parliamentarian is a Senate employee. A respected one, but one who serves at the pleasure of the majority leader. Republicans have had no compunction about ignoring—and even firing—parliamentarians who try to thwart them. As is how it is supposed to work. The Congressional Research Service even says so: “The parliamentarians and their deputies/assistants only offer advice that the presiding Representative or Senator may accept or reject.”

“Whether we keep our promise or not is a question of political will,” 91 House Democrats assert to the Senate. “We cannot let an unelected advisor determine which promises we fulfill and which we do not, especially when the vast majority of Americans—in both parties—want us to provide a pathway to citizenship.”