Can Biden Make Impactful Immigration Reform?
Guest blogger: Nick Wagener, law student, University of San Francisco
On January 20th, 2021, at 12 PM Eastern Standard Time, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States of America. His election will be in part a result of the disgust that more than 75 million American’s felt when faced with the pain, misery, and disfunction Donald Trump has deliberately created within our immigration system.
Joe Biden will be tasked with not only returning our immigration system to some sort of normalcy, but also fulfilling his mandate to make some of the changes to our immigration policies that liberals have been advocating for decades, even ones that were advocated for in vein during the Obama administration. But with the Senate more than likely remaining in Republican control without a surprising upset in the Georgia run-off Senate elections, Biden will be faced with an uphill battle to achieve those changes. So, what can a President Biden achieve when he is sworn in?
The area where Biden will be able to enact change immediately is in the realm of executive orders, a tool which both Donald Trump and Barrack Obama used liberally in order to achieve their goals. It can be expected that Biden will reverse in whole or in part many of the executive orders that Trump made regarding immigration. This will have a huge impact in the area of asylum. Per Biden’s campaign website, he will reverse the tightening of grounds for being defined as a member of a “particular social group.” We can also expect a revamp the asylum system and provide funding so that cases can be determined in a fair and streamlined fashion. Biden will also likely be able to increase funding to humanitarian efforts at the border, though not only increasing the humanitarian tools at the disposal of the Border Patrol and public and private humanitarian organizations.
The “Travel Ban 3.0” that Trump was able to finally get through the courts will also likely be done away with in full or in part. And perhaps most important to Americans on both sides of the political divide, we will almost certainly see an end to the family separation policy that left our reputation around the world in tatters.
All of these actions will be easily within Biden’s grasp, and it should come as no surprise he makes good on these actions within the first 100 days in his presidency. These actions will likely be challenged by conservatives in the courts, but the discretion of the presidency in matters of asylum especially is weighty.
However, there are other policy objectives where Biden will have to succumb to the will of congress. The most pressing issue on his agenda is reinstating the DACA program and providing a path to citizenship to its recipients known as Dreamers. While this program was created under an executive action by President Obama, the goal is and ought to be to achieve a congressionally approved plan for them to receive all the benefits that DACA promised in its original form, in addition to a substantive path to citizenship under the DREAM Act. This may be achievable in a Senate that is so closely split, as prominent Republican Senators such as Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham have voiced support for DACA recipients in the past. But it would be incredibly close, and in all likelihood concessions may have to be made in order for any bill on the subject to be passed.
The largest goal on the President-Elect’s website is to pass legislation that “Creates a roadmap to citizenship for the nearly 11 million people who have been living in and strengthening our country for years.” This will undoubtedly be hard to achieve with the likely outcome in the senate. Any movement on such legislation would require a strong showing by Democrats in the 2022 mid-term elections.
However, a more attainable goal in the short term is a path to green card status and eventual citizenship for those migrants who have continuously engaged in temporary agricultural work such as through the H2-A visa program. While such a policy faces a steep legal battle, it is a far more measured goal that could gain traction in the Senate if the Biden administration works well with Senate Republicans.
Liberal America may not have unanimously been behind Joe Biden at the outset of the 2020 presidential cycle. There are many who had preferred candidates whom they found much more progressive or personally palatable. And while Joe Biden may not be all the things they are looking for, the likelihood that he will only stay in office for one term means that he may have a unique opportunity over the course of the next four years to aggressively push for immigration reforms. His efforts may not pan out, but they can move the national discussion far closer to where immigration reform advocates have been arguing for us to go for years.
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