Immigration atop Biden to-do list
Path to citizenship for millions reported to be in measure
LOS ANGELES — During his first days in office, President-elect Joe Biden plans to send a groundbreaking legislative package to Congress to address the long-elusive goal of immigration change, including what’s certain to be a controversial centerpiece: a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people illegally in the country, according to immigrant-rights activists in communication with the Biden-Harris transition team.
The bill also would provide a shorter pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of people with temporary protected status and beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program who were brought to the U.S. as children, and probably also for certain front-line essential workers, vast numbers of whom are foreigners.
In a significant departure from many previous immigration bills passed under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the proposed legislation would not contain any provisions directly linking an expansion of immigration with stepped-up enforcement and security measures, said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center Immigrant Justice Fund, who has been consulted on the proposal by Biden staff members.
Both Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have said their legislative proposal would include a pathway to citizenship for millions of people, and the Times has confirmed the bold opening salvo that the new administration plans in its first days doesn’t include the “security first” political concessions of past efforts.
Hincapie, who was co-chairman of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force on Immigration — part of Biden’s outreach to his top primary rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and his progressive base — said that Biden’s decision not to prioritize additional enforcement measures was probably a result of lessons learned from the Obama administration’s failed attempt to appease Republicans by backing tighter immigration enforcement in hopes of gaining their support for immigration relief.
“This notion concerning immigration enforcement and giving Republicans everything they kept asking for … was flawed from the beginning,” Hincapie said.
Biden-Harris transition team officials declined to comment on the record.
Biden’s proposal lays out what would be the most sweeping and comprehensive immigration package since President Ronald Reagan’s Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which granted legal status to 3 million people.
Under Biden’s plan, people would become eligible for legal permanent residence after five years and for U.S. citizenship after an additional three years — a faster path to citizenship than in previous immigration bills.
But even with Democrats holding the White House and slender majorities in both chambers of Congress, the bill will probably face months of political wrangling and pushback from conservative voters and immigration hard-liners.
Several immigration activists praised the reported scope and scale of the bill and expressed surprise at its ambition. A number of legislators and analysts had predicted that the new administration, at least in its first months in power, would be likely to pursue immigration measures that would stir the least controversy and could be achieved by executive action rather than legislation.
“I think this bill is going to lay an important marker in our country’s history,” said Lorella Praeli, an immigrant and longtime activist who has been talking with Biden’s staff, noting that the measure “will not seek to trade immigration relief for enforcement, and that’s huge.”
Praeli, president of Community Change Action, a progressive group based in Washington that advocates for immigrants, described the bill as “an important opening act.”
“If there is a silver lining to the Trump era, it’s that it should now be clear to everyone that our system needs a massive overhaul and we can no longer lead with detention and deportation,” she said.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, said in a call with reporters Friday that in the meantime, he was working on a bill seeking immediate protection from deportation and a fast-track path to citizenship for essential workers who are illegally in th country.
“It’s time for essential workers to no longer be treated as disposable, but to be celebrated and welcomed as American citizens,” he said. “If your labor feeds, builds and cares for our nation, you have earned the right to stay here with full legal protection, free from fear of deportation.”
In an interview with Univision last week, Harris gave a preview of the bill’s provisions, including automatic green cards for foreigners with temporary-protected and DACA status, a decrease in wait times for citizenship from 13 to eight years, and an increase in the number of immigration judges to relieve a significant backlog in cases.
Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Calif., chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said that he anticipates the Biden administration will present a combination of executive orders, standalone bills and a comprehensive immigration package — the building blocks of which are contained in bills already passed by the House.
Ruiz said now is the time to act on a comprehensive immigration package, and that a “constant barrage” of dehumanizing rhetoric against immigrants led to a rise in white supremacist backlash under the Trump administration.
“I believe that our nation has been traumatized,” Ruiz said.