Pathway to Citizenship
Breaking: During his first days in office, President-elect Joe Biden plans to send legislation to congress that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants who are in the country without legal status. https://t.co/z0ImiAT6OM
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 16, 2021
The LA Times which broke the story has a pay wall but the Tweets are self-explanatory.
- Breaking: During his first days in office, President-elect Joe Biden plans to send legislation to congress that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants who are in the country without legal status.
- Biden’s legislation does not include money to support detention and deportation. Previous immigration bills passed under both Democratic and Republican administrations linked an expansion of immigration with stepped-up enforcement and security measures.
- The bill would provide a shorter pathway to citizenship for people with Temporary Protected Status, for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients and likely also for certain frontline essential workers, vast numbers of whom are immigrants.
- Biden’s proposal would be the most sweeping and comprehensive immigration package since President Reagan’s in 1986 Immigrants would become eligible for legal permanent residence after 5 years and wait 3 more years for U.S. citizenship.
- Even with Democrats holding power in the White House and with slender majorities in both houses of Congress, the bill likely will face months of political wrangling and pushback from conservative voters and immigration hardliners.
Mish
Not necessarily. As the Trump years fade we will rediscover that old truth U.S. Congressman Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich) stated so truthfully: “Democrats want the votes, and the Republicans want the cheap labor.”
I invented that over 25yrs ago. who the hell is Kerry Bentivolio??????
Once Biden starts a war to benefit his friends in the MIC we’ll plenty of draftable young male citizens. Biden is thinking ahead on this one.
a note to all: the USA government system involves independent sovereign states and an electoral college. I don’t know of any like govt in the entire world. Clue me in if another such govt exists, anywhere. Maybe the ans, if any, will give us a clue as to why the US is so mired in these problems such as immigration.
We could develop a same workable humane immigration system that also followed the law, but too many people benefit from the current dysfunction. Businesses want the cheap labor, democrats want what they think will be a solid voting block (didn’t work too well in Texas and Florida in 2020 though) and both parties want a permanent wedge issue a la abortion that people can bicker and argue over in perpetuity without ever being solved.
BREEDING LESS, might be the first step towards a fair sustainable immigration system and a BETTER world in general…..Maybe the pope and imams could give us a hand ….
If you replied to Green Squirrel Nazi Catholic Conspiracy comment, I just deleted the whole chain.
Haha I couldn’t resist
Open borders vs the libertarian pose (errr.. position).
I feel we should be selective about who we allow to immigrate to the US, allowing only the best and the brightest. However, for those that think the conservatives are tougher on this issue they’ve been really good about looking the other way with illegal immigration while utilizing the lower cost labor including Trump. The progressives, on the other hand, while supposedly the supporters of labor, are providing a helping hand to drive down unskilled labor costs by supporting illegal immigration. Two forms of virtue signalling leading to the same result, screwing the American working class. If they are gonna be here mind as well get em to pay taxes etc…..
The Age of Immigration both legal and illegal is over. Almost no chance that there will be any “Reform Legislation” (merely another phrase for Open Borders). If you allow eleven million illegal entrants to apply for citizenship, then you are allowing possibly another 30 million of their “families” to immigrate under the family reunification option. Also the children in detention can leave and return to their countries at anytime, hardly an abusive situation. The “drop your child of at the border plan” was being horribly abused and needed to be stopped. Once the flood of illegal entrants start making their way to the border in what will be known at the “Biden Tide”, Biden will revert to Trump and Obama’s policies. Biden may even start with finishing the Wall.
Google (or preferably DuckDuckGo) “honduran migrant caravan” and you’ll see 9,000 people are in a new caravan trying to make their way north. They’re planning to arrive shortly after the inauguration.
If they get there it will be very interesting to see how the dems handle 100s of thousands of migrants showing up at the southern border. After four years of non-stop demonization of Trump for his handling of migrants they can now call the shots.
Can I ask a silly question…why doesn’t US Congress come up with a ‘Guest Worker’ programme, other countries operate them quite successfully. As far as I can see ‘guest worker visa’s’ would be a win for both US & the guest worker. The guest workers would not have any rights to public funds or be able to obtain US citizenship for either themselves or their dependents incl. any children born in the US, I would go so far as to not give US Citizenship to a child of a guest worker even if one parent is a legal US Citizen.
US wins because it gets the workers that it needs incl. the guest workers direct & indirect taxes. The guest worker if they so chose also gets something in that they may achieve a quality of life not available to them in their own country of birth.
“As far as I can see ‘guest worker visa’s’ would be a win for both US & the guest worker.”
Well, a win-win for everyone except the citizen who gets displaced by the guest worker. Please spare me the “no one has the skill set of the guest worker!” because the true statement is “the guest worker will work for a lot less than the citizen since the guest worker’s home country is a garbage heap in comparison!”
By the way, I would guess such programs exist, H1-B, for example.
If farmers have to pay $40 hour for labor then there won’t be many American farms left that require labor. It will all get “outsourced”and that doesn’t make America great at all.
Guest worker programs only really help big businesses. That’s why tech adores the H1B when they’re not busy outsourcing to India.
You make a great point. Indian and chinese engineers will be doing a significant percentage of tech work. It’s just a matter whether they do it here in the usa and pay America taxes or they get outsourced and pay taxes in their home countries.
I think guest worker status for the people walking north out of Guatemala, Honduras, and Salvador would be an EXCELLENT idea.
The problems with it are political rather than economic.
For one thing we ended up some years ago with a massive number of undocumented illegals in the country simply because we never tried very hard to keep them out….most of them came from Mexico, back in the day.
By the time we realized it was much of a problem, we had many millions of these people, most of whom considered this country home….all of their children did..they knew no other life, most of them.
That group of quasi-citizens created its own political demographic, over time. Many of the illegals became citizens…..one way was by military service… a very common way. The legal ones lobbied for the illegal ones.
Our policies were never very good. Too much of it came from rather silly 19th century notions of nation-building…..”give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses”.
We did that…..and got huddled masses out the wazoo.
And God knows we had to take in people running from communism. Do you have any idea how many “communist refugees” got instant green cards by just walking across the Texas border, between 1959 and 2019? At times it has been in the tens of thousands a year.
Until the Reagan years…..almost nobody gave a damn about illegal immigration……but as the pie got smaller for American low wage workers over the last 40 years (stagnant wages and rising cost of living) ….the resentment levels have gotten much higher.
Somebody was talking about Mexican Americans voting Republican…..it’s easy to understand if you see that they might have good reason not to love unlimited numbers of uneducated, extremely poor people arriving from Central America willing to work cheaper than they do…..
Now we vet people to see if they are “qualifying refugees”….which is a joke,
It would make much better sense to give some or all of these people work permits with no immediate path to citizenship….and let the contribute to the economy and pay tax and send money home…..just like many other rich countries in the world do.
But the discussion, as you can see form this thread, is dominated by feelings and emotions……it becomes about compassion and fairness and blah, blah, blah.
No room for common sense.
“Can I ask a silly question…why doesn’t US Congress come up with a ‘Guest Worker’ programme…”
I’m guessing you’re Indian, and that tells me your not in the U.S.
We have one, called the H1-B visa program, I live in a tech area and the concentration of H1-B Indians in my area is so big that local supermarkets stock traditional Indian food.
While I have your attention, what exactly is Masala?…I keep passing it at the supermarket, curious what’s in it, not wanting to buy it then wind up tossing it out.
I have one Indian neighbor who’s wife goes way overboard on the curry, to the extent my eyes water if I don’t close windows, I have to assume this is just bad cooking, they’re just too nice to even mention it to risk insult, but man, it’s awful at times.
The guest workers generally don’t go back to their home countries e.g the German guest worker program of the 1960’s. These days, Germany has millions of Turkish Germans who can trace their ancestry back to the guest worker program which ended in 1973.
My wife says many Russian people have been getting visitors visas to the US over the last 10 years and overstaying their visa and just becoming illegal. There is a huge influx of Russian immigrants in various places in the country, especially in California. These same Russians are for the most part Trump supporters and believers in conspiracy theories. This weekend we could open hear them talking about how Biden stole the election at an outdoor mall. While Trump and the Republican party argue that Democrats are for illegal immigration, they fail to mention they too are for illegal immigration as long as the people immigrating are for Trump and/or the Republican party.
LOL! I don’t doubt what you write, as that was my impression when I lived in LA a few years back. Lots of Russians! However, nothing in comparison with south of the border immigrants. I mean come on…
That is a good point about illegal immigration. So the whole idea of immigrants to this country boils down to whether they would be Rep or Dem. If they are destined to stay poor they would be Democrats, If they opened businesses and acquired some wealth, they would be Republicans? Or does it boil down to their country of origin?
Cloward-Piven on steroids.
The party of delusion thinks that the immigrants are doing nothing useful in the economy.
The party of delusion thinks that those refusing to leave the jobless areas of the country to seek work have greater claims on the economy than those who are ready to uproot and search out work.
I never said any of that.
I just wanted to mention what some of the real problems are……..and maybe look for reasonable solutions , as opposed the lame-ass “give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses” liberal theology approach to American immigration policy.
Because, my friend, that sounds very compassionate, but it hides a whole laundry list of hidden agendas held by the various elites, both conservative and liberal, who decide how we do things in this country.
And letting in everybody who wants in hasn’t worked out well…we have tried that,I might point out. For most of my lifetime.
And it drives me nuts to see somebody who is obviously an educated individual, like yourself, make the whole argument into “liberals are compassionate and conservatives are mean and racist.”
Sir, it simply is far more compicated than you’re making it out to be….and there is exactly zero evidence that suddenly giving 11 million illegal aliens citizenship….is going to solve any of the real problems…..which is maybe what we should be giving more attention towards.
Eddie, your points are valid. May I suggest you end your debate with Pecunia for he is an egomaniac and an obnoxious bully. He’s the liberal Trump.
The 700K DACA’s…..doing anything besides giving them citizenship is more trouble than it’s worth….the rest of them…..what is that, 1.3 million? That’s a lot, and it sends the wrong message. Put me down as not thrilled.
Here we see the Dems trying to slam dunk something on their real agenda…..get 11M New Democrats signed up to vote. The inclusion and diversity plank was always about the votes.
typo…10.3 million
Don’t forget statehood for DC and PR. That will finish the job of insuring one-party rule. Only things hanging would be elimination of the Electoral College and expanding the Supreme Court.
Not one-party rule … pulling the right wing back from the precipice of nihilism and back on the road to sanity and legitimacy.
None of those things is real. This one is real.
“Here we see the Dems trying to slam dunk”
Well they have to counteract all the republican gerrymandering to keep the democrats from power…
The wall-less party is kicking off their “gig” with more walls than Trump built. Enjoying the “walls” going up around our capital when the powers to be have told us “walls” don’t work. What else has been said that won’t work?
Trumps position on illegal children was a stain on this country. The position never made any sense and was born more of hate than any true policy goals. It appealed to racist who simply wanted to make America white again. It was truly embarrassing. Good for Biden to reverse it.
All for strengthening enforcement along the border but moves to stop even legal immigration because of people’s color , ethnicity or religion was always wrong. And despite thinly veiled rhetoric that is exactly what was going on.
What a big stain, shame on Trump ! However, killing children, or at least being responsible for their death, in far away countries under the warmonging Bush and Obama administrations, THAT was fckn OK, wasn t it ? Hypocrite ! Btw, the immigration floodgates are now open again , I suggest you accommodate some of them poor children and their parents …..
so you agree on citizenship for the children but have an issue with Obama and Bush you would also like to explore
Well, Europe can always accommodate them. As for your baseless charges about being responsible for the death of civilians in faraway countries that theory can apply to any war at any time, any place. We were merely trying to bring some justice and some orders to countries that had neither. If we fail, you fail also in Europe.
I would love to see the number on races that immigrated to America “legally”. My bet is you would find the opposite of what you may be claiming.
Reagan and Bush the Elder both promoted similar policies as Biden’s proposal.
For people who still identify as the “Party of Lincoln,” there should be no problem looking back fondly on conservative policy from only 30+ years ago.
But I am but Diogenes and his lantern, searching the darkness for an honest man.
Couldn’t the same accusation be made of Democrats who believed in stopping illegal immigration (Clinton I and II, Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Schumer) but now have no interest in stopping it? Playing the hypocrisy card can cut both ways.
What constitutes belief in stopping illegal immigration? Lockstep with Trump? Anything less is open border policy?
Are you unaware that the Trump Administration credits the Obama Administration with the detention and separation policy?
Is this purely a political move or does Biden and others actually see an economic benefit to the US by doing this? Is there a cost analysis being done on this move?
Is there a place in your universe for morality or compassion? Trust, perhaps? After all, those noted liberals Reagan and Bush I offered similar ideas.
I was going to put moral reasons on the list, but it seems to me most of what the US government is doing is to effect the economy. And, the truth is, everything does have a cost. Then you bring up the question is this a good move for the US on moral grounds. Thank you.
I suppose that as in France, “morality or compassion” is for immigrants only, with a complete ignorance of the fall of the middle class (until its complete extinction). This ignorance is the first cause of the appearance of Trump.
Soon after Reagan allowed millions of hispanics to become citizens, California turned permanently blue. This is the plan for the entire US. This is a political move. First of many. Next will be eliminating the filibuster, adding DC and PR as states, packing the supreme court, and eliminating the electoral college. Ensuring democrats rule forever.
There’s nothing wrong with conservative ideals per se, but in an ever-changing universe, conservatism must adapt or die. American history always marches to the left, and the liberals have dragged the conservatives kicking amd screaming every step of the way. It seems that every generation must learn this anew.
“There’s nothing wrong with conservative ideals per se…”
If it weren’t for their oblivious allowance of corporate empowerment over the Democratic process (Citizens United, Buckley / Valeo, Eisenhauer’s MIC…) I’d be voting more conservative.
Personal freedom requires the dispersion of excess power and control over government atop the control of government itself over individual freedom.
CA turned blue because Gov Pete Wilson (R) was a demagogue who attacked Latinos relentlessly and promoted policies which singled out and punished this particular group. Hispanics and Latinos are the fastest growing group of voters – maybe the republicans should try appealing to them instead of repeating their mistakes in places like, AZ which has followed CA’s path.
“President-elect Joe Biden plans to send legislation to congress that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants who are in the country without legal status.”
What about the other 60 million? Seems like a half hearted effort.
The other 60 million are coming.
“Mr. President, tear down that wall!!!!”