President-elect Joe Biden.
An immigrant rights activist recently said he learned from the Biden transition team that Biden plans to send a legislative proposal to Congress on his first day as president that would address the long-elusive goal of immigration reform. The central issue that he expects will spark intense congressional controversy is that Biden wants to provide a pathway to U.S. citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the bill would also suspend deportation for thousands of people with temporary protected status and those who entered the country illegally as children with their parents (DACA, or “Dreamers”), and could provide a faster path to U.S. citizenship for some key health care workers, most of whom are immigrants.
Biden’s proposal is the broadest and most comprehensive immigration package since President Reagan’s Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. At the time, that bill by President Reagan granted legal status to 3 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
Compared to previous immigration bills, Biden’s plan would allow people to obtain U.S. citizenship more quickly. Illegal immigrants would be eligible for legal permanent residency after five years and U.S. citizenship after another three years.
Community Action for Change, a leftist group based in Washington that advocates for immigrants, welcomed Biden’s action. We’re talking about potentially 5 million undocumented workers,” said Praeli, the group’s president. As key (medical) employees, they are risking their lives. They are essential and cannot be deported.”
For his part, Leon Rodriguez, who served as U.S. citizenship and immigration director from 2014 to 2017, said the timing of the immigration bill’s discussion is important.
Lora Ries, the Trump administration’s executive deputy chief of staff for homeland security in 2019 and a current fellow in homeland security at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, said giving citizenship to most immigrants would be a way to sow division and erode the nation’s immigration system. “Such incentives will undermine border security by attracting more people to enter the United States illegally and wait for eventual green cards,” she said.
Hiroshi Motomura, a professor of immigration law at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), also said any long-term solution to immigration reform must first address the question of why people immigrate. “Legalization is essential, but I don’t think it’s enough,” he said.
He also believes that Biden’s immigration reform bill is likely to succeed because Senate Democrats currently have the same number of seats as Republicans. He added: It comes at a time when “during the (Communist virus) pandemic, (U.S. society) has exposed the vulnerability of (relying on) employees in key industries who do not have legal status.”
A large number of Hondurans (more than 8,000) have now reportedly driven another caravan to the U.S., but have been blocked in Guatemala. Commenting on the crisis, the Guatemalan president’s office said, “Guatemala’s message is clear and loud: this type of illegal mass migration will not be acceptable. That is why we are working with our neighbors to address this regional problem.” And Mexico has already said that the caravan will be subject to increasingly harsh penalties.
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