Latinos had been disappointed with Barack Obama. This time, they hope that Joe Biden will pass the immigration reform they have been waiting for nearly fifteen years. A few hours after taking office, the new president sent Congress a bill they were satisfied with. It provides for a phased regularization of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, and providing some of the jobs essential to the economy during a pandemic without benefiting from health insurance.
Congress will have to vote on what promises to be the most ambitious reform since Ronald Reagan granted legal status to some 3 million undocumented migrants in 1986. Some Republicans are already using the word.“Amnesty”, vocabulary that derailed reform attempts under George W. Bush and, in 2013, under Barack Obama.
The project also gives “Dreamers”, young people who arrived in the United States before the age of 16, new hope. Donald Trump had repealed the decree taken by Barack Obama to allow them to stay in the United States, without going so far as to pronounce their expulsion to countries they barely know. The Supreme Court blocked this measure in June 2020. Joe Biden signed an executive order that restores their status for four years, while Congress passes legislation that would allow them to obtain American citizenship. Likewise, beneficiaries of temporary residence permits, Haitians or Central Americans hosted on humanitarian grounds, should have their residence permits canceled by the Republican president, pending final status.
Suspended evictions
The bill (“US Citizenship Act of 2021”) would give undocumented migrants present in the United States to 1er January 2021 a temporary legal status allowing them to apply for the “green card” (residence permit) within five years, provided they meet certain criteria. Three years later, they would be eligible for US citizenship. Farm workers and slaughterhouse workers, the first victims of the pandemic, especially in meat factories in the Midwest and fields in California, should be a priority in regulation: it could be part of the plan. stimulus that Mr. Biden intends to submit to Congress.
The reform is not tied to a promise to strengthen the border, like the tactic adopted in 2012 by Barack Obama in the hope of appeasing Republicans. On the contrary: Joe Biden has confirmed his intention to stop the construction of the wall touted by Donald Trump as one of the successes of his term. In a proclamation, the newly elected official canceled on Wednesday the declaration of a national state of emergency at the Mexican border which had allowed his predecessor to finance the work of the wall with funds allocated to the Pentagon.
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