- US President Biden reveals an immigration bill for immigrants by granting an 8-year citizenship path to all the immigrants staying in the United States.
- The legislation, known as the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, hews closely to the outline that Biden sent to Congress on his first day in office.
- This move was considered to be a plan that was supposedly disclosed by Biden on the first day of his administration with a hope to provide an eight-year path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the US without any prominent legal status.
- According to the Bill, those people who are living in US as of the 1st of January, 2021 without any former legal status would be granted with a five-year path to temporary legal status if they pass all the necessary verifications, and documents related to paying of taxes, fulfilling other basic requirements. The Green Card is also valid to proof as an individual’s identity. From then, the next step is the three-year path to naturalization, if any immigrant decides to attain the US citizenship.
- For some immigrants, the process would be quicker. So-called Dreamers, the young people who arrived in the U.S. illegally as children, as well as agricultural workers and people under temporary protective status, could qualify more immediately for green cards if they are working, are in school or meet other requirements.
- The current administration is facing pressure from business groups to end Trump’s bans on most work visas, which the former president put in place shortly after the pandemic hit the U.S. The White House has put the visa bans under review but has yet to revoke them. This is the reason many of the immigrants are staying in US without any legal status.
- After four years of President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies and mass deportations, the legislation of Biden needs to get into a track to deliver on a major campaign promise important to the Latino voters. This provides one of the fastest pathways to citizenship for those living without legal status of any measure in recent years, but it fails to include the traditional trade-off of enhanced border security favoured by many Republicans, making passage in a narrowly divided Congress in doubt.
- The oath ceremony of the President was conducted on Wednesday to which President Biden referred former President Trump’s actions on immigration as an unrelenting assault towards the values of America. He pledged to retract the damages so that the border enforcement is continued to be properly maintained.
- Several expectations are listed from the tenure of Biden. The major ones include the swift executive actions to be taken so as to reverse other immigration actions conducted by Trump and the other one is to allow the arrivals of immigrations from several predominantly Muslim countries.
- The president also ordered construction halted on Trump’s wall at the Mexican border. Biden’s proclamation rescinded the national emergency that Trump declared to secure funding for the project.
- The citizenship path is not conditional on the implementation of border security measures, which had been a trade-off included in past immigration bills designed to earn Republican support.
- Representative Linda Sanchez, a California Democrat, sponsored the bill in the House and New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez is its chief sponsor in the Senate.
- The Democrats are employing the reconciliation process to pass Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan.
- The Menendez-Sánchez bill would expand legal immigration for those seeking employment- and family-based visas by clearing backlogs of those waiting for green cards, lifting per-country visa caps, and exempting spouses and minor children from annual green card quotas. It includes a pilot program that creates 10,000 new visas for workers to help spur economic development in certain parts of the country.
- This Mendez-Sanchez bill also contains provisions designed to please labour unions, which have in the past complained that certain visa programs allow companies to employ lower-paid migrant workers instead of American citizens. The bill would tie green card levels to macroeconomic conditions and establish a commission on workplace conditions comprised of union officials, civil rights advocates and others, administration officials said.
- A bipartisan group of lawmakers has reintroduced the Dream Act, which would offer deportation protections and a citizenship path to immigrants, known as Dreamers, who were brought illegally to the U.S. as children. Democrats have also supported legislation that would offer immediate relief to farmworkers.
- Representative Joaquin Castro of Texas is also introducing a bill that would offer permanent legal status to about 5 million undocumented immigrants who have worked in front-line jobs during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as so-called Dreamers and those with Temporary Protected Status.
- Biden’s proposal makes Dreamers, farmworkers and migrants with Temporary Protected Status eligible to apply for permanent legal residence right away, which would allow them to apply for citizenship within three years. That faster path to citizenship is meant to signal that those groups are important, but it doesn’t mean the White House has decided to pursue piecemeal bills to protect them, an administration official said on Wednesday.