Congressional Democrats roll out Biden’s immigration plan, offering an eight-year path to citizenship.
President Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill formally introduced his immigration overhaul in the House on Thursday morning, making good on his campaign promise to seek to modernize the nation’s immigration system and provide a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented Americans.
“We’re here today because last November 80 million Americans voted against Donald Trump and against everything he stood for,” Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said at a virtual news conference. “They voted to restore common sense, compassion, and competence in our government. And part of that mandate is fixing our immigration system, which is a cornerstone of Trump’s hateful horror show.”
The unveiling puts a spotlight on a high-profile and thorny political issue that Mr. Biden is hoping to address, despite the steep political challenges associated with moving immigration legislation in Congress.
It comes at a time when the president and Democratic lawmakers are already in the midst of another major legislative undertaking: passing another coronavirus relief package. A planned trip by Mr. Biden to visit a Pfizer vaccine manufacturing facility in Michigan on Thursday was postponed until Friday because of a winter storm in the Washington area.
Though Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief plan is all but certain to command attention on Capitol Hill in the near term, the introduction of the immigration overhaul provides a reminder that a number of daunting issues unrelated to the pandemic lie ahead as well.
Mr. Menendez and Representative Linda T. Sánchez, Democrat of California, unveiled the immigration legislation, which will be called the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 and is based on a proposal Mr. Biden announced on his first day in office. The two lawmakers were joined by 10 of their colleagues for the announcement.
The centerpiece of the legislation is an eight-year path to citizenship for most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States as of Jan. 1. After passing background checks and paying taxes, they would be allowed to live and work in the United States for five years. After that, they could apply for a green card, giving them permanent status in the United States and the opportunity to win citizenship after three more years.
But the bill tries to make the most far-reaching changes in immigration law in more than three decades. It would sweep away restrictions on family-based immigration, making it easier for spouses and children to join their families already in the country. And it would expand worker visas to allow more foreigners to come to the United States for jobs.
Unlike previous efforts to overhaul immigration, the legislation does not include a large focus on increased border enforcement. Instead, the bill adds resources to process migrants legally at ports of entry and invests $4 billion over four years in distressed economies in the hopes of preventing people from fleeing to the United States because of security and economic crises.
Mr. Menendez acknowledged that it would be difficult to win the support of the 10 Republican senators needed to pass Mr. Biden’s legislation. The Senate is split 50-50 and Democrats will need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.
But Mr. Menendez rejected arguments by some immigration advocates that Congress should pursue more targeted bills that provide citizenship to smaller, more discrete groups of undocumented people.
“We will never win an argument that we don’t have the courage to make,” he said. “We will do the righteous thing and make our case for both inclusive and lasting immigration reform. And we have seen in poll after poll, the vast majority of Americans are standing with us.”
Thomas Kaplan contributed reporting.
Michael D. Shear is a White House correspondent. He previously worked at The Washington Post and was a member of their Pulitzer Prize-winning team that covered the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007. More about Michael D. Shear
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