Vice President-elect Kamala Harris said the proposal also includes reducing the time required to obtain citizenship to eight years.
Biden will also sign dozens of executive orders, according to a memo from new chief of staff Ron Klain, including the termination of the travel ban in predominantly Muslim countries.
“The last thing we need to say is that we are going to immediately stop – you know – access to asylum in the way it is now being managed and end up with 2 million people on our border. It is a matter of setting up the protection grid so that we can move in the direction, “ Biden said last month.
But behind the scenes, plans have been set in motion to prepare for new arrivals, which have been steadily increasing since last year and represent an immediate challenge for the new government, which is establishing its own immigration policies.
The Department of Homeland Security has implemented contingency plans, in anticipation of an increase in migrants on the southern border as a result of deteriorating conditions in Latin America and a perceived relaxation of application, and passing these plans on to transition officials, according to a senior DHS officer. Plans include, for example, the use of flexible facilities that take into account Covid-19 precautions.
Non-governmental organizations and the Biden transition have been involved in regular planning talks that focus primarily on connecting with direct service providers at the entrance to ports to begin to gain a more subtle perspective on processing and regional differences, according to with two sources familiar with discussions.
The long-term plan is to set in motion a regional strategy that addresses root causes and expands the paths for migration.
Central American migrants
According to the official Guatemalan immigration agency, some 7,000 to 8,000 migrants to the United States have crossed the border from Honduras to Guatemala since Friday.
Caravans, as they have largely become known, are intended in part to provide security in large numbers while migrants embark on the dangerous journey north. The Trump administration has taken advantage of caravans to support controversial and restrictive policies that have largely isolated the U.S., but are only a means of migration.
“It gets overwhelming attention because it’s a lot of people. They do it for security, they do it for the community. … It doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a better chance of getting in,” said Theresa Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
“We had known for some time that there was a pent-up demand to come to the United States,” added Brown, citing conditions in Latin America.
Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday that the country is closely following the developments of a caravan of migrants heading to the United States from Central America, adding that it is talking to government officials in America Central and the United States, including the next Biden government. Lopez Obrador said his team is “in communication with the United States government, current officials and those entering the new government” around the issue of caravans.
Reversing Trump’s administration policies
The Trump administration has taken an aggressive stance on the U.S.-Mexico border that has resulted in thousands of migrants waiting along the southern border for the date of the U.S. immigration court and, during the coronavirus pandemic, the rapid removal of migrants, including children.
When that happens, management will also have to deal with the ongoing migration. “This will be the challenge for this government. They will have to deal with it while planning how they want it to be,” said Brown.
Stefano Pozzebon of CNN in Bogotá and Florencia Trucco in Atlanta contributed to this report.