President-elect Joe Biden makes pre-holiday comments at The Queen in Wilmington, Delaware on December 22, 2020. (Photo by ALEX EDELMAN / AFP via Getty Images)
SAN DIEGO – President-elect Joe Biden’s decision to immediately ask Congress to offer legal status to some 11 million people in the country surprised supporters, given how the issue has long divided Democrats and Republicans, even within their own parties.
Biden will announce legislation on his first day in office to provide a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the United States illegally, according to four people informed about his plans.
The president-elect campaigned for citizenship to some 11 million people illegally in the United States, but it was unclear how quickly he would act while fighting the coronavirus pandemic, the economy and other priorities. For the defenders, the memories were recent of the presidential candidate Barack Obama promising an immigration bill in his first year of office in 2009, but did not address the issue until his second term.
RELATED: The US Completely Restores Protection for DACA Claimants
Biden’s plan is the opposite of Donald Trump, whose successful 2016 presidential campaign was based in part on reducing or stopping illegal immigration.
“This really represents a historic shift in Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda, which recognizes that all undocumented immigrants who are currently in the United States must be put on a path to citizenship,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law. Immigration Center, which was informed about the account.
If successful, the legislation would be the biggest move to grant illegal status to people in the country since President Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to nearly 3 million people in 1986. Legislative efforts to revise immigration policy failed in 2007 and 2013.
Ron Klain, Biden’s new chief of staff, said on Saturday that Biden would send an immigration bill to Congress “on his first day in office.” He did not elaborate and Biden’s office declined to comment.
Defenders have been briefed in recent days on the outline of the project by Esther Olivarria, deputy director of immigration for the White House’s Domestic Policy Council.
RELATED: If Biden suspends the border wall, it could cost taxpayers billions, warns the CBP chief
Domingo Garcia, a former president of the League of Latin American Citizens, said Biden told supporters in a phone call on Thursday that Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate could delay consideration of the bill and that they shouldn’t count on the bill. approval in 100 days.
“I was pleasantly surprised that they acted quickly because we received the same promises from Obama, who was elected in 2008, and he totally failed,” said Garcia.
Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum and among those informed on Thursday night, said the immigrants would be put on an eight-year path to citizenship. There would be a faster route for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects people from deportation who came to the country as children, and Temporary Protection Status, which gives temporary status to hundreds of thousands of people devastated by conflict countries , many from El Salvador.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris made similar comments in an interview with Univision that aired on Tuesday, saying that recipients of DACA and TPS “will automatically receive green cards”, while others would be on an eight-year path. for citizenship.
More favorable attitudes towards immigration – especially among Democrats – may weigh in Biden’s favor at this point. A Gallup poll last year found that 34% of respondents were in favor of more immigration, up from 21% in 2016 and more than any other time since they started asking the question in 1965. The survey found that 77% thought that immigration was good for the country as a whole, slightly above 72% in 2016.
Noorani said the separation of more than 5,000 children from their parents at the border, which peaked in 2018, alienated voters from Trump’s policies, mainly conservatives and evangelicals. He believes that an ever-changing perspective for DACA recipients also hurts Trump among people who felt he was using them as “political pawns”.
“What was marked in their minds was the separation from the family. They took it out on the Republican Party in 2018 and took it out on Trump in 2020,” Noorani said. “To make a really good point of it, they want to end the Trump administration’s cruelty.”
It is impossible to know precisely how many people are illegally in the country. The Pew Research Center estimates that there were 10.5 million in 2017, down from a historical record of 12.2 million in 2007.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates that there were 12 million people in the country illegally in 2015, almost 80% of them for more than 10 years. More than half were Mexicans.
___
Associated Press writer Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.