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During his first days in office, President-elect Joe Biden plans to send a groundbreaking legislative package to Congress to meet the long-held goal of immigration reform, including what is sure to be a centerpiece controversial: a path to citizenship for around 11 million people. immigrants who are in the country without legal status, according to immigrant rights activists in contact with the Biden-Harris transition team.
The bill would also provide a shorter path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of people with temporary protected status and recipients of deferred action for child arrivals who have been brought to the United States as a child, and probably for some essential frontline workers as well, many of whom are immigrants.
Unlike many previous immigration bills passed under the Democratic and Republican administrations, the bill would not contain any provision directly linking an expansion of immigration to increased enforcement and security measures, Marielena said. Hincapié, Executive Director of National Immigration. Law Center Immigrant Justice Fund, which was consulted on the proposal by Biden staff members.
Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have said their legislative proposal will include a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants to the United States without legal status, and The Times has confirmed the bold opening salute that the new administration expects in its early days not to include the “security first” political concessions of past efforts.
Hincapié, who was co-chair of the Biden-Sanders Unit Task Force on Immigration – as part of Biden’s outreach to his main rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and his progressive base – said that Biden’s decision not to prioritize additional enforcement action was likely a result of lessons learned from the Obama administration’s failed attempt to appease Republicans by supporting stricter immigration enforcement in the hope to gain their support for immigration assistance.
“This notion of enforcing immigration law and giving Republicans whatever they ask for … was flawed from the start,” she said.
Biden-Harris transition team officials declined to comment on the case.
Biden’s proposal presents what would be the most radical and comprehensive immigration package since President Reagan’s 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted legal status to 3 million people who were in the country without papers.
According to Biden’s plan, immigrants would become eligible for lawful permanent residence after five years and US citizenship after three more years – a quicker path to citizenship than in previous immigration bills.
But even with Democrats holding the White House and small majorities in both houses of Congress, the bill will likely face months of political wrangling on Capitol Hill and crackdown from Tory voters and supporters of the immigration.
Several immigration activists who spoke to The Times praised the scope and breadth of the bill and expressed surprise at its ambition. A number of lawmakers and analysts had predicted that the new administration, at least in its first few months in office, would be likely to take immigration measures that would generate the least controversy and could be obtained through actions of the government. executive rather than legislation.
“I think this bill will mark a significant milestone in the history of our country,” said Lorella Praeli, a longtime immigrant and activist who spoke to staff at Biden, noting that the measure “does not will not seek to trade immigration assistance for the application, and that’s huge.
Praeli, president of Community Change Action, a progressive Washington-based group that advocates for immigrants, described the bill as “an important act of openness.”
“If there is a silver lining in the Trump era, it is that it should now be clear to everyone that our system needs a massive overhaul and that we can no longer drive with it. detention and deportation, ”she said.
Representative Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said in a call to reporters Friday that, in the meantime, he was working on a bill to get immediate protection from deportation and a fast track to citizenship for workers without essential papers.
“It’s time for essential workers to stop being treated as disposables, but to be celebrated and welcomed as US citizens,” he said. “If your work nurtures, builds and takes care of our nation, you have earned the right to stay here with full legal protection, without fear of being deported.”
In an interview this week with Univision, Harris gave an overview of the bill’s provisions, including automatic green cards for immigrants with TPS and DACA status, a reduction in wait times for U.S. citizenship from 13 to eight years, and an increase in the number of immigration judges to alleviate a significant backlog in cases.
Representative Raul Ruiz (D-Palm Desert), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said in an interview with The Times that he expects the Biden administration to present a combination of executive orders, stand-alone bills and a comprehensive agenda. Immigration Reform – the building whose blocks are contained in bills already passed by the House. Among them are the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, the Homeland Security Improvement Act, the Humanitarian Standards for Customs and Border Protection Act, the U.S. dreams and promises and the law on TPS in Venezuela.
Ruiz said the time had come to act on comprehensive immigration reform and that a “constant barrage” of dehumanizing rhetoric against immigrants had led to a rise in white supremacist backlash under the Trump administration.
“I believe our nation has been traumatized,” Ruiz said. “We need to be able to change the narrative to heal from this, to build trust between communities and to tone down the hate rhetoric of the Trump administration. And to really show – not just to ourselves but to the world – that America, always at its bosom, is good and that it will respect our humanitarian values. “
President Trump sparked international condemnation early in his administration by separating more than 5,000 children from their parents starting in 2017 and escalating in 2018 as part of a “zero tolerance” policy on unauthorized attempts to ‘enter the United States.
The policy was ultimately stopped following a nationwide outcry, but not before scores of adults were deported to Central America, leaving behind hundreds of children, from toddlers to teens. Many are still separated from their parents.
Leon Rodriguez, who was director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2014 to 2017, said that “the public’s attitude towards immigration law enforcement is different in 2021 than it was anytime before the Trump administration. ”
“I think there was a lot about the way immigration law enforcement was carried out under the Trump administration that didn’t suit a lot of Americans, and it just creates an attitude different with respect to these issues and a different political calculation, “he said.
While a traditional enforcement element is not part of Biden’s initial bill, that doesn’t mean it can’t be addressed later, Rodriguez said.
But he believes Biden’s overall approach will set an entirely different tone.
“It’s not going to be about walls and keeping people in Mexico,” he said.
Ruiz said that rather than simply adding more resources for immigration law enforcement, the existing apparatus of federal security agencies should focus on combating guns, drugs and criminals.
“What we don’t want is to militarize the border,” he said. “We don’t want to demonize, dehumanize and criminalize an immigration process.”
But Lora Ries, acting deputy chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security under Trump in 2019 and now a homeland security researcher at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, said granting the Most immigrants’ path to citizenship would divide and erode the country’s immigration system.
“Such rewards will attract more people to enter the United States illegally to await their eventual green card, which will undermine border security,” she said.
Hiroshi Motomura, professor of immigration law at UCLA, said any long-term solution to immigration reform must first explain why people migrate.
“Legalization is essential, but on its own we are going to have the same conversation in 25 years or even sooner,” he said. “While I welcome legalization, I think it’s not enough.”
This is exactly what happened following the 1986 reform, Motomura said. This time around, however, he thinks a comprehensive immigration reform bill has a better chance of success. Having a Democratic majority in the Senate makes a difference, he said, but beyond that, “the pandemic has exposed the hypocrisy of [relying on] essential workers who do not have legal status. “
“We see the Republican Party going through a lot of internal upheaval about what it stands for,” he said. “Immigration issues have never been so polarized along partisan lines. We may have a time when there is a movement for people to vote less along party lines.
Rodriguez also said the timing of the bill was important. For years, the Republican and Democratic Presidents have grappled with immigration and delayed or procrastinated passage of a major immigration bill.
“Biden says we’re not going to do it that way anymore,” Rodriguez said.
Hincapié said Biden’s team would be able to sidestep the legislation to quickly make a number of administrative changes.
She expects him to announce several executive actions that would expand the DACA, overturn Trump’s 2017 travel ban on Muslim-majority countries, and repeal Trump’s public office rule, which allowed authorities to refuse. green cards to immigrants who use – or whose US citizen children use – food. stamps or other public benefits.
If the larger bill were to die or take too long to pass, Praeli said, there are other ways for Democratic leaders to legalize a large group of people – especially the 5 million essential workers currently in the workforce. the country without legal status.
As part of COVID relief, the President-elect and Democratic leaders may decide to include measures that provide legal status to essential workers through a process known as budget reconciliation, and which would only need 51 votes to adopt the Senate.
“We are talking about potentially 5 million workers who put their lives on the line as essential workers,” Praeli said. “You cannot be essential and deportable.”
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