President-elect Joe Biden will ‘immediately’ send a legislative package to Congress which would provide a pathway to citizenship for some 11 million illegal immigrants, according to the Los Angeles Times, according to “immigrants rights activists in communication with the Biden-Harris transition team.”
The bill would also provide a shorter pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of people living in the United States under a temporary protected status and/or who qualify under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program who were brought into the US as children.
And in what the Times calls a “significant departure from many previous immigration bills under both Democratic and Republican administrations,” the Biden plan would contain zero provisions for stepped-up immigration enforcement and security measures, according to Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center Immigrant Justice Fund, who was informed of the details by Biden staffers.
Both Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have said their legislative proposal would include a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the U.S. without legal status, and The Times has confirmed the bold opening salvo that the new administration plans in its first days doesn’t include the “security first” political concessions of past efforts.
Hincapié, who was co-chair of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force on Immigration — part of Biden’s outreach to his top primary rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and his progressive base — said that Biden’s decision to not prioritize additional enforcement measures was probably a result of lessons learned from the Obama administration’s failed attempt to appease Republicans by backing tighter immigration enforcement in hopes of gaining their support for immigration relief. –Los Angeles Times
