Dems eye piecemeal immigration reform
WASHINGTON — After decades of failed attempts to pass comprehensive immigration legislation, congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden are signaling openness to a piece-by-piece approach.
They unveiled a broad bill on Thursday that would provide an eight-year pathway to citizenship for 11 million people living in the country without legal status. There are other provisions, too, but the Democrats are not talking all-or-nothing.
“Even though I support full, comprehensive immigration reform, I’m ready to move on piecemeal, because I don’t want to end up with good intentions on my hands and not have anything,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo. “I’d rather have progress.”
The bill Democrats introduced Thursday would:
• Immediately provide green cards to farm workers, immigrants with temporary protected status and young people who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children.
• Establish a five-year path to temporary legal status for others living in the U.S. as of Jan. 1, 2021. If they pass background checks, pay taxes and fulfill other basic requirements, then, after three years, they can pursue citizenship.
• Raise the current per-country caps for family and employment-based immigrant visas.
• Eliminate the penalty barring
those immigrants who live in the U.S. without authorization and who then leave the country from returning for three to 10 years.
• Provide resources for more judges, support staff and technology to address the backlog in processing asylum seekers.
• Expand transnational antidrug task forces in Central America.
• Enhance technology at the border
• Set up refugee processing in Central America, to try to prevent some of the immigrant caravans that have overwhelmed border security in recent years.
• Allocate $4 billion over four years to try to boost economic development and tackle corruption in Latin American countries, to lessen pressure for migration to the U.S.
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and California Rep. Linda Sanchez held a virtual press conference Thursday to unveil the bill.
“Our border policy is broken, period,” Sanchez said. “But this bill employs a multipronged approach that will manage the border, address the root causes of migration crack down on bad actors and create safe and legal channels for those who are seeking protection.”
The broad legislation faces long odds with Democrats holding only a slender majority in Congress.
The White House insisted Thursday there have been no decisions on strategy.
Cuellar said many in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are still committed to a comprehensive overhaul.
He said the White House reached out to him and he advised them to start with a broad bill, but he added that “reality is going to hit people, hopefully,” and more lawmakers will get on board with a more incremental approach.
Indeed, Biden himself suggested in a CNN town hall Tuesday night that “there’s things I would deal by itself.”
Separately, enforcement guidelines released Thursday by the new administration would target immigration enforcement more directly at people in the country illegally who pose a threat. Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents would primarily apprehend and remove people who pose a threat to national security, committed crimes designated as “aggravated” felonies or recently crossed the border.
ICE drew fierce criticism under President Donald Trump for arresting and removing anyone in the country illegally regardless of criminal history or community ties.