U.S. Immigration Reform To Be A Biden Priority
3 min read
As this year reaches an end and the inauguration of Joe Biden as the next president of the United States approaches, there are rising desires that the dysfunctional state of U.S. immigration can finally be addressed and immigration reform adopted to fix what isn’t working.
The Gold Standard of Immigration Reform
Meanwhile, Progressive Democrats in the House of Representatives are gearing up to demand an exhaustive overhaul of the U.S. immigration system. This Immigration Reform effort which the defenders call “The Roadmap,” goes beyond reversing the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies, and is far more extensive than Biden’s proposals.
Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, will present a resolution – co-sponsored by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Yvette Clarke of New York, Judy Chu of California, Jesús García of Illinois, and Veronica Escobar of Texas. However, the expectation is that it will become the “gold standard” for measuring Biden’s reforms on immigration. It includes:
- Making a pathway to citizenship for the country’s 10.5 million undocumented immigrants.
- Clearing the current backlog from naturalization applications.
- Prioritizing family unity by eliminating barriers to family reunification. Also, creating a process “for eligible people who are expelled, confined, or in the sanctuary”. To rejoin with their families and return to the United States.
- Establishing a system of “scalable civil consequences to immigration violations”. So that detention and deportation are not the default punishment for almost every infraction of immigration law.
- Wiping out revenue-driven immigration detention facilities.
- Ending the utilization of state and nearby prisons and jails for immigration detention.
- Promoting options in detention and finishing the detention of “vulnerable populations” such as families and children.
- Guaranteeing that “no individual is eliminated, removed, or denied admission [to the United States] without ensured and meaningful access to legal defense.”
- Making an “independent Immigration Court system” in which judges can practice discretion.
- Finishing Border Patrol checkpoints in the interior of the nation.
- Guaranteeing “immigrants‘ access to medical care and housing.”
- Creating “a fact and reconciliation process to give justice to the individuals who have suffered under a harsh system over many years.”
Reasonable Measures That are Going To Be Implemented Now
However, another package of immigration recommendations was recently set forward by the CATO Institute. These proposals are a compilation of 15 essays composed by top legal specialists on immigration. Among the proposals brought forward are:
One proposal is advanced by Ira Kurzban — a former-president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and writer of Kurzban’s Immigration Law Sourcebook. The most legitimate book on immigration law in the United States. Also, Kurzban contends that the State Department should fix the issue of backlogged immigrants. By ending its policy of counting spouses and minor children of immigrants against the employment, family, and diversity green card caps imposed by Congress as limits every year.
[Are H-1B programmers “normally” professional]
According to Kurzban, only the principal candidates should be so counted and such a change would increase lawful immigration by a huge number of new principal candidates every year. Points out this method of counting was used previously and should be reinstated.
Amy M. Nice — a former Attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters — contends that the State Department should “recapture” the green cards that went unused under the caps in past years because the agency neglected to give them. Again she points out this has been done in the past.
