While Democratic lawmakers unveiled their legislative proposal on Thursday, they framed it as a deliberate rejection of the Trump administration’s approach. Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, one of the main proponents of the bill, said that by sending Biden to the White House, the Americans effectively commissioned Congress to “fix our immigration system, which is the cornerstone of the hateful horror show. of Trump. “
The bill would pave the way for citizenship for almost all undocumented immigrants living in the United States, increase legal immigration and accelerate the consideration of asylum seekers. It would also take steps to protect the country’s borders and ports of entry, while investing $ 4 billion in the economies of Central American countries to lessen the incentive for emigration. And it would remove the word “foreigner” from federal law in favor of “non-citizen”.
To say that this represents a break with previous approaches to immigration reform would be an understatement. The last time Congress passed a major overhaul was in 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed a law that makes it illegal for employers to hire undocumented immigrants.
President George W. Bush later put a center-right plan for comprehensive reform at the center of his appeal to Hispanic voters. He obtained 44 percent of Latin votes in the 2004 election, according to the polls – exceptionally high for a Republican candidate – but the reform never passed.
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His successor, Barack Obama, proposed an immigration bill that balanced inspection measures with a path to citizenship for the undocumented, but it never became a priority and was shipwrecked. This left many immigration advocates disappointed – and in some cases suspicious of Obama’s former vice president, Biden.
In the Obama administration, the downward trend in the overall number of deportations has continued since previous administrations, and he has placed an emphasis on deporting people with a criminal record. But, in the end, he deported more than five million people, while consolidating the role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency installed under the Bush administration.
Trump rose to the Republican nomination and then to the presidency, in part due to the strength of his opposition to immigration and the racial overtones that it allowed him to sound. His draconian border policies may have been the defining issue of his presidency and helped to bring his base together around his conservative populism.