SAN DIEGO (AP) – President-elect Joe Biden’s decision to immediately ask Congress to grant legal status to an estimated 11 million people in the country has surprised proponents, given that the issue is Democrats and Republicans have long divided even within their own parties.
Biden will announce legislation on his first workday to illegally provide millions of immigrants in the United States with a path to citizenship, according to four people briefed on his plans.
The president-elect campaigned for citizenship for the approximately 11 million people in the US illegally, but it was unclear how quickly he would move as he grappled with the coronavirus pandemic, the economy and other priorities. For lawyers, memories were fresh of presidential candidate Barack Obama who promised an immigration law in his first year in office, in 2009, but only tackled the problem in his second term.
Biden’s plan is the opposite of Donald Trump, whose successful 2016 presidential campaign relied in part on curbing or stopping illegal immigration.
“This truly represents a historic shift in Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, which recognizes that all undocumented immigrants currently in the United States must move towards citizenship,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of National Immigration Law. Center, who was notified of the bill.
If successful, the legislation would be the biggest step toward granting status to people in the country who are illegal since President Ronald Reagan granted amnesty to nearly 3 million people in 1986. Legislative attempts to overhaul immigration policy failed. in 2007 and 2013.
Ron Klain, Biden’s new chief of staff, said on Saturday that Biden will send an immigration bill to Congress “on his first day of work.” He did not proceed, and Biden’s office declined to comment on details.
Lawyers were briefed on the broad outline of the bill in recent days by Esther Olivarria, deputy immigration director on the White House’s Internal Policy Council.
Domingo Garcia, former president of the League of Latin American Citizens, said Biden told lawyers on Thursday that Trump’s impeachment process in the Senate could delay consideration of the bill and that they should not be sent for passage within 100 days. to calculate.
“I was pleasantly surprised that they would act quickly, because we got the same promises from Obama, who was elected in ’08, and he failed completely,” said Garcia.
Ali Noorani, chair of the National Immigration Forum and among those briefed on Thursday evening, said immigrants would be given an eight-year path to citizenship. There would be a faster route for those participating in the Delayed Action for the Arrival of Children program, which protects people from deportation who came to the country as young children, and a temporary protected status, which gives hundreds of thousands of people temporary status against unrest. countries, many from El Salvador.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris made similar comments in an interview with Univision airing Tuesday, saying DACA and TPS receivers “automatically get green cards,” while others would be eight years on their way to citizenship.
A more favorable stance on immigration – especially among Democrats – may weigh in Biden’s favor this time. A Gallup Survey Last year found that 34% of those surveyed were in favor of more immigration, up from 21% in 2016 and higher than ever since the start of demand in 1965. The survey found that 77% thought immigration was good for the country as a whole, up slightly from 72% in 2016.
Noorani said the divorce of more than 5,000 children from parents at the border, which peaked in 2018, alienated voters from Trump’s policies, especially conservatives and evangelicals. He believes the constantly changing outlook for DACA recipients is also hurting Trump among people who thought he was using them as “ political pawns. ”
“What was seared in their heads was the separation of the family. They explained it to the Republican Party in 2018 and they took it out against Trump in 2020, ”said Noorani. “To make a very good point: they want to end the cruelty of the Trump administration.”
It is impossible to know exactly how many people are illegally in the country. Pew Research Center estimates that was 10.5 million in 2017, down from an all-time high of 12.2 million in 2007.
The Homeland Security Department estimates there were 12 million people illegally in the country in 2015, almost 80% of them for more than 10 years. More than half were Mexican.
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Associated Press writer Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.