The Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rodney Frelinghuysen, siding with the Democrats on his committee and ruling against a roll call vote on the issue, gave a green light to DACA aliens (slightly legalized by Obama fiat) seeking jobs in the government. That includes Congress itself.
Last week the committee was working late on one of those gigantic spending documents, named the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill, and one of the Democrats on the committee moved to allow the participants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to work for the feds. The DACA program of the last administration had given the then-illegal aliens temporary legal status, access to legitimate Social Security numbers, and permission to work legally on a general basis. It has not been reversed by the Trump administration.
Frelinghuysen ruled that the Democrats had won on a voice vote. A Politico report on the meeting, which is behind a paywall and cannot be linked, said that the chair's decision eliminating a recorded vote was met by Republican groans.
As to the old wounds, that's personal. I was my party's sacrificial candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives 59 years ago; I was defeated, as expected, in the then Fifth Congressional district of New Jersey by the GOP incumbent Peter H. B. Frelinghuysen Jr., father to the current congressman. I do not remember immigration as a topic that year and cannot imagine my opponent going out of his way to help the Democrats on any issue.
Rodney is the most recent of a long string of Frelinghuysens to serve in Congress; one of them was in George Washington's Senate, another was a vice presidential candidate (unsuccessful) with Henry Clay, a third was in both the Senate and in Grant's cabinet, and yet another helped torpedo the League of Nations.