In contrast to the policies of the Trump administration, president-elect Joe Biden plans to create an eight-year path to becoming a citizen of the US for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants living in the country through an immigration bill he has promised to introduce on his inaugural day.
As promised to the immigrant communities during his election campaign, Biden will start to act in their favor on the massive deportations and restrictive policies by Donald Trump’s administration. This legislation will oppose the opinions of many Republicans about enhanced border security but at the same time provide a quick pathway for the people living in the country without legal status to attain citizenship.
According to the legislation Biden is planning to propose in order to, according to his own words, “undo the damage” caused by Trump’s actions, by maintaining border enforcement is that those already living in the country on January 1st, 2021, illegally and have paid taxes, passed background checks and other basic requirements, would be given a five-year path to temporary legal status. If they decide to attain citizenship, they can get on another three-year path to naturalization and the process would be much faster for the immigrants that arrived illegally in the country as children, agricultural workers or under temporary protective status.
Biden has been naming immigration as his “day one” priorities and he has also mentioned his plans to tackle several other immigration actions executed by trump including the ban of arrivals from numerous Muslim predominant countries and he has also said that aggressive deportations were taken too far by the Obama administration.
Some Republicans along with several allies of Joe Biden have acknowledged immigration as a major issue that the new administration can share agreement with Mitch McConell, the Senate Republican Leader and other GOP senators. This is important as Biden aims for legislative victories in Congress that is closely divided, where Republicans would surely oppose other proposals from him involving rolling back of some GOP’s tax cuts of 2017 and increasing federal spending.
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