Can President Biden fix America's Immigration System?

When the fate of the Democratic presidential primary was still unclear last February, journalist Jorge Ramos coaxed Joe Biden with an emotion he was not in the habit of expressing: remorse for the actions of his former boss, Barack Obama.

Mr. Ramos asked Mr. Biden about the immigration legacy of the Obama administration, which includes the expulsion of more than three million illegal immigrants, of whom an estimated 1.7 million have no criminal records. "We have taken far too long to get it right," Mr. Biden said of the early failure of the administration to concentrate solely on those who had committed crimes. I think that was a huge mistake"

On his first day as president, Mr. Biden took an unprecedented step towards remedying the mistake: not only did he rescind a Trump executive order that actively targeted undocumented immigrants for deportation only hours after he was sworn in on Wednesday, but he also sent a sweeping plan to Congress that vowed an explicit anti-immigration administration after four years.

Inside Biden's proposal 

The U.S. Called If made law, Mr. Biden's 2021 Citizenship Act proposal will be the most extensive immigration reform since the Reagan administration. Here are some of its main provisions:

An eight-year citizenship path: The bill will require the estimated 10.5 million undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. on or before Jan. 1, 2021, to apply for temporary legal status immediately. (Current temporary protected status holders, farm employees and Childhood Arrivals Deferred Action applicants will be eligible to apply automatically for green cards.) Those with temporary status will be eligible for green cards after five years, if they pass background checks and pay their taxes, and for citizenship after another three years.

The bill seeks to make it easier for family-based immigration, which was significantly reduced under the Trump administration, by clearing backlogs, raising per-country visa quotas and lifting the so-called three- and 10-year bars that prevent the return of illegal immigrants who leave the country. An overhaul of the family- and job-based immigration system. At the same time, the initiative aims to make immigrating to and remaining in the country easier for highly qualified foreign employees.

Labor protection: The bill calls for the creation of a commission to improve deportation protection for migrant workers facing workplace retaliation and labor abuses affecting labor, employers and civil rights organizations.

A proposal to fix the root causes of Central American immigration: the bill will set up a $4 billion program to help El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras alleviate violence, crime, and other factors that force people, as thousands now do, to leave their home countries.

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References

Can Biden finally fix America’s broken immigration system? (2021, January 21). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/opinion/biden-immigration-plan.html