SAN DIEGO (AP) – President-elect Joe Biden’s decision to immediately ask Congress to offer legal status to approximately 11 million people in the country has shocked advocates given that the issue has divided Democrats and Republicans for a long time, even within their own parties.
Biden will announce legislation his first day in office to provide a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the United States illegally, four people reported on his plans.
The president-elect campaigned on the road to the citizenship of nearly 11 million people in the U.S. illegally, but it was unclear how quickly he would move as he battled the coronavirus pandemic, the economy and others. priorities. For advocates, there were new memories of presidential candidate Barack Obama promising an immigration law in his first year in office, in 2009, but not addressing the issue until his second term.
Biden’s plan is the polar opposite of Donald Trump, the success of the 2016 presidential campaign was based in part on curbing or stopping illegal immigration.
“This really represents a historic shift in Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda that recognizes that all undocumented immigrants currently in the United States should be placed on a path to citizenship,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Act. Center, who was informed of the bill.
If successful, the legislation would be the most important measure toward granting status to people in the country illegally since President Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to nearly 3 million people on 1986. Legislative efforts to revise immigration policy failed in 2007 and 2013.
Ron Klain, Biden’s new chief of staff, said Saturday that Biden will send an immigration law to Congress “on his first day in office.” He did not delve into it and Biden’s office declined to comment on details.
Advocates have been briefed in recent days on the broad outlines of the bill by Esther Olivarria, deputy director of immigration for the White House Interior Policy Council.
Domingo Garcia, former president of the League of Latin American Citizens, said Biden told advocates Thursday that Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate may delay consideration of the bill and that they should not count on the move to 100 days.
“I was pleasantly surprised that they took swift action because we received the same promises from Obama, who was elected on 08, and totally failed,” Garcia said.
Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum and among those briefed Thursday night, said immigrants would be put on an eight-year path to citizenship. There would be a faster track for those in the Deferred Action for Children Arrivals program, which protects people from deportation who arrived in the country when they were young children, and the Temporary Protection Status, which grants temporary status to hundreds of thousands of people victims of conflicts. countries, many of El Salvador.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris offered similar comments in an interview with Univision which was issued on Tuesday, saying DACA and TPS recipients will “automatically receive green cards,” while others would be on an eight-year path to citizenship.
The more favorable attitudes toward immigration, especially among Democrats, may weigh in on Biden this time around. A Gallup poll last year it was found that 34% of respondents favored more immigration, compared to 21% in 2016 and higher than at any time since they started asking the question in 1965. The survey found that 77% considered that immigration was good for the country as a whole, slightly 72% in 2016.
Noorani said the separation of more than 5,000 children from parents at the border, which culminated in 2018, alienated voters from Trump’s policies, particularly conservatives and evangelicals. He believes a constantly changing perspective of DACA recipients also harmed Trump among people who felt he was using them as “political pawns”.
“It simply came to our notice then. They took him out of the Republican Party in 2018 and took him out of Trump in 2020, “Noorani said.” To put a very fine point on it, they want to end the cruelty of the Trump administration. ”
It is impossible to know exactly how many people are in the country illegally. Pew Research Center estimates there were 10.5 million in 2017, below the all-time high of 12.2 million in 2007.
Estimates from the Department of Homeland Security there were 12 million people in the country illegally in 2015, almost 80% of them for more than ten years. More than half were Mexicans.
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Associated Press writer Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.