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Joe Biden plans further executive actions on January 29
Washington:
Hours after being sworn in as president on Wednesday, Joe Biden sent lawmakers an immigration bill that would pave the way for citizenship for millions of immigrants living illegally in the United States, in stark contrast with the policies of former President Donald Trump.
Biden will also sign 15 executive actions on Wednesday, at least six of those relating to immigration, making the issue a major theme on the Democratic president’s first day in office.
The actions included the immediate lifting of a travel ban in more than a dozen predominantly Muslim and African countries, halting construction of the US-Mexico border wall, and overturning a Trump order preventing migrants who walk away. illegally found the United States to be counted in the United States Congress. the electoral districts are then redrawn.
Biden will also sign a memorandum directing the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Attorney General to preserve the Deferred Action Program for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which protects migrants arriving in the country as children of the deportation, and to quash Trump’s decree calling for stricter enforcement of domestic immigration.
Biden plans additional executive actions on Jan.29, including restoring U.S. asylum protection, strengthening refugee treatment, and establishing a task force to reunite families still separated by Trump’s border policies, according to a memo shared with lawmakers and obtained by Reuters.
Biden will also lift barriers to legal immigration put in place by his Republican predecessor over the past four years, the memo said.
The new president is also expected to end a Trump program called the Migrant Protection Protocols on Jan.29, according to a person familiar with the plan. The program has left tens of thousands of asylum seekers waiting in Mexico for U.S. court hearings, many of whom were stuck for months in squalid tent camps near the U.S. border.
Taken together, the actions show Biden starting his presidency with a focus on immigration, just as Trump kept the issue at the center of his political agenda until the final days of his administration. In one of his rare post-election public appearances, Trump visited a section of the US-Mexico border wall earlier this month.
Biden’s decision to immediately revoke Trump’s travel ban, which sparked widespread protests upon his signing and was called discriminatory, drew praise from business groups and advocates. Myron Brilliant, an executive at the US Chamber of Commerce, said the overthrow would help “restore our credibility on the world stage.”
BILL NO SLAM DUNK
Lifting the ban may be an easier task, however, than getting Congress to pass Biden’s ambitious bill. It will set an eight-year roadmap to citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the country, according to a backgrounder distributed to reporters by new White House officials on Tuesday.
Eligible immigrants who were in the country on January 1 will be granted temporary status for five years, before being granted Green Permanent Residence Cards, which is subject to certain requirements, such as background checks. They could then apply for citizenship after three more years, officials said.
The wait time for legalization would be shorter – three years – for some of the approximately 645,000 current DACA beneficiaries and more than 400,000 immigrants living in the United States on Temporary Protected Status (TPS). It would also be accelerated for some agricultural workers.
Many DACA, TPS and farm worker holders who are not currently eligible for permanent residence would be immediately eligible to apply for green cards, officials said.
Trump has tried to end DACA and phase out TPS for some countries, but has been blocked in federal court. A case challenging the DACA, which was set up in 2012 when Biden was vice president to former President Barack Obama, is still ongoing in Texas.
If passed, it would be the biggest legislative overhaul of the U.S. immigration system since the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
While Democrats effectively hold a majority in the US House of Representatives, the Senate will be split 50 to 50 with Vice President Kamala Harris as the deciding vote. A lack of bipartisan support has torpedoed past efforts to overhaul the immigration system.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida on Tuesday called the bill a “no-starter” which included “a general amnesty for people who are here illegally.” Advocates could push for the passage of small bills seeking incremental change if the larger effort fails.
In the meantime, Biden faces a more immediate problem. Caravans of migrants are on the move in Central America, some aiming to arrive at the southwest border after Biden’s inauguration. On Monday, Guatemalan soldiers armed with batons clashed with migrants, abducting much of a caravan that included women and children.
Biden’s actions on his first day in office do not include the repeal of a coronavirus pandemic-era order issued by the US Centers for Disease Control that allows border officials to deport almost all cross-border workers, according to information sheets published by his team.
More than 380,000 people were quickly returned to their countries of origin or pushed back to Mexico under the order, known as “Title 42” for the law under which it falls, since March 2020, according to data from US customs and border protection.
New national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday during a call to reporters that it would be “unwise” for migrants to come to the border now due to limited capacity to process asylum claims .
“The situation at the border is what we intend to change, but it will take considerable time,” he said.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
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