Immigration Reform Efforts for the Undocumented Living in the US
The Biden Administration has started the debate with a comprehensive proposal and vision – to regularize the status of undocumented immigrants already living here allowing them to become legal permanent residents and in time US citizens, to fix the broken legal immigration system, and to curb unlawful immigration at its sources in some nearby Latin America. Trump’s proposals were to deport them all and shut down many of avenues for legal immigration; these were key components of his 2016 campaign, and he did his best to issue Presidential directives to make immigration ever more difficult during his four tumultuous years in office.
There are four categories of undocumented impacted: Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status card holders, farm workers, and other immigrants living here without legal papers as of 1/1/21 – up to 11 million residents of the US.
Dreamers were brought here by their parents as children and have grown up here. Their current legal status was created by an Obama Executive Order allowing them to register, avoid deportation and work. Trump tried to revoke their status and deport them, but he was not successful in the courts. There have been repeated efforts to pass legislation protecting them from deportation and giving them a path to citizenship. There is agreement between many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that the Dreamers should be afforded legal status and a pathway to citizenship, and a bill in the current session of Congress authored by Dick Durbin and Lyndsey Graham would do so; this could pass and be signed now that Trump is a resident, though possibly not lawfully, of Mar a Lago. Between 700,000 and 1.6 million US residents are Dreamers. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/13/who-daca-dreamers-and-how-many-here/333045002/
Temporary protected status refers to people who have been admitted due to natural disasters such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions or to civil wars in their own countries. These include citizens of El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria and Sudan – about 320,000 persons currently residing in the US have TPS status. Many have been here for significant periods of time; they are authorized to work under TPS. Trump sought to revoke most TPS status and deport these families back to their home countries, but he was not successful.
Undocumented farm workers refers to people working in the fields without legal papers. About ½ to 3/4s of those working in the fields are undocumented – an estimated 1.0 to 1.25 million persons. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-undocumented-immigrant-farmworkers-agriculture.html There is potential for a bi-partisan agreement and strong support from both agricultural employers and unions on regularizing the status of immigrant farm workers, as they are so essential to the nation’s food supply. https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/biden-proposes-legal-status-path-to-citizenship-for-undocumented-farmworkers
The Biden proposal would afford immediate legal permanent residency status to farm workers, Dreamers and TPS individuals and families and a three-year path to citizenship. In other words, they can work and live without fear of deportation; they can come out of the shadows. They must pay their taxes, learn English and US civics and keep out of trouble with the criminal law.
The Biden proposal would offer an eight-year path to citizenship for all other undocumented immigrants living in the US as of 1/1/21 – about 8 to 8.5 million persons. Most (2/3rds) are long-time US residents, living here for over 10 years, and 80% have been here for more than 5 years; somewhat less than half are from Mexico originally, most of the rest from Asia or Central America. https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-many-undocumented-immigrants-are-in-the-united-states-and-who-are-they/ California accounts for 2.5 to 3.0 million undocumented. They are hard working, working in low pay jobs, paying sales, income and Social Security taxes and ineligible for most public programs. Most work in farm and food production, construction, restaurants and hotels. The Biden proposal would allow work, travel, joining the military and moving out of a life in the shadows into a temporary residency status for a five year period, followed by a three year path to citizenship for those who have paid their taxes, kept out of legal troubles in the criminal justice system and passed security checks.
The Biden proposal may be broken into discrete parts to give some components a better chance to pass Congress. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/18/bidens-immigration-bill-bleak-odds-469769 At this point, there is broad and wide Republican opposition to comprehensive immigration reform, but support exists for at least some component parts of the legislation. It will almost certainly require a 60 vote majority in the Senate. The Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform with 67 votes in 2013, but Tea Party domination of the House Republicans blocked it from being considered in the House. Trump has pushed the Republican Party ever further to the right on immigration reform over the past four years; Republican immigration reform leaders like Senators McCain and Flake are gone, and Senators Rubio and Graham have gone ever further to the right. The Menendez-Sanchez bill is an excellent starting point for the necessary negotiations to move forward.
Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin
Dated: 2/19/21