The Biden Presidency: A New Hope for Immigrants?
January 2021 | Syeda Jamshed, Staff Writer/Editor
America: the land of opportunity. Immigration has been the foundational stone for the United States of America since its establishment. For the past few decades, immigration has not only been on the rise, but it has also become one of the focal points of American society, welfare, and politics. The United States was built, in part, by immigrants, and the nation has long been the beneficiary of the new energy and ingenuity that immigrants bring. Today, one in seven of the nation’s residents are foreign-born, while one in eight residents is a native-born U.S. citizen with at least one immigrant parent.[1] Although the Statue of Liberty, one of the premier symbols of the United States, welcomes “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” America’s relationship with its immigrants has long been complicated.
Throughout the United States’ history, there have been persistent and charged debates over the nature and consequences of immigration. At times, America has greatly restricted the number and characteristics of newcomers, despite its aspiration to be identified as a “nation of immigrants” and a “melting pot”. The Trump administration has issued more than 400 executive actions that dramatically reshaped America's immigration system including family separations, fast-track deportations, and immigration restrictions imposed on several nations.[2] A majority of Americans had been desperately waiting for the 2020 elections for a new administration that would favor immigration. The recently elected Biden-Harris Administration has become a new beacon of hope for the immigrant community. The following article will provide an overview of the future Biden presidency’s plans for immigrants and how the current immigrant/refugee minority feels about the future administration’s plans.
The Biden-Harris Campaign has a plan for securing the democratic values of America as a nation of immigrants. The focal points of the immigration plan will take urgent action to undo Trump’s damage, and the plan includes modernizing America’s immigration system, welcoming immigrants in our communities, reasserting America’s commitment to asylum-seekers and refugees, tackling the root causes of irregular migration, and implementing effective border screening. Furthermore, in the first 100 days, the Biden Administration will immediately reverse the Trump Administration’s policies that separate parents from their children at our border. The new administration will also end the current mismanagement of the asylum system, which fuels violence and chaos at the border. Furthermore, prolonged detention will be ceased and a case management program will be reinvented. The Administration will also reverse Trump’s public charge rule, end the so-called National Emergency that siphons federal dollars from the Department of Defense to build a border wall, protect Dreamers and their families, and rescind the travel and refugee bans, also referred to as “Muslim bans.”[3] As president, Biden will commit significant political capital to deliver legislative immigration reform that ensures the US remains open and welcoming to people from every part of the world. This will ultimately bring hardworking people who have enriched our communities and our country, in some cases for decades, out of the shadows for good.
The immigrant community currently has mixed responses for the upcoming immigration policies of the Biden-Harris Campaign. Biden pledged during his campaign to use his powers to reverse many of Trump’s most controversial actions. Biden’s plan includes a 100-day moratorium on deportations, restoring protections for young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, and eliminating Trump’s restrictions on asylum-seekers.[4] But some immigrant rights groups, like the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), Movimiento Cosecha, and United We Dream, want more. “We need advocates and people who wake up every day thinking about how they're going to fix the system so that people like myself and people like my family and others who are seeking refuge here have the ability to have a better life,” said Erika Andiola, an immigrant rights activist and advocacy director for RAICES.[5]
Recognizing that the political divide in Congress makes a major overhaul of the immigration system unlikely, the advocacy groups are pushing for Biden to use his presidential powers to take steps sooner rather than later. The divide between the incoming administration and activists dates back to the Obama administration, when immigration rights advocates were not happy with how former President Barack Obama handled enforcement issues — a period when Obama had been dubbed the “deporter in chief” for his record on deportations. The incoming administration is sensitive to activists’ demands. Biden nodded to their concerns when he picked the first Latino immigrant to lead the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement. While introducing Alejandro Mayorkas as his pick for Secretary of Homeland Security, Biden said Mayorkas knows “we are a nation of laws and values.” Advocates remember Mayorkas from his work crafting the DACA program, which has protected hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.[6] This shows the administration’s willingness to listen to the concerns of immigration advocacy groups, but there are still a lot of promises that need to be fulfilled in the next four years.
The success of the Biden-Harris Campaign at winning the Presidency was largely celebrated by immigrants all across the nation. They have clearly been facing numerous challenges, discrimination, and scrutiny under the Trump Administration. For a better future, the immigrant community widely supported the Biden-Harris Campaign in their efforts, in hopes of a new leader who will support and protect them. So far, the Biden-Harris transition has demonstrated its commitment towards them, both in promises and in nominations. But the question of whether the Biden-Harris Administration will be the new hope for immigrants remains to be answered, as only time will tell.
Sources
“Immigrants in the United States.” American Immigration Council. 6 Aug 2020. Web. 22 Dec 2020.
Bolter, Jessica, & Pierce, Sarah. “Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System: A Catalog of Changes under the Trump Presidency.” Migration Policy Institute. Web. July 2020.
“THE BIDEN PLAN FOR SECURING OUR VALUES AS A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS.” Biden Harris. Web. 22 Dec 2020.
Ordonez, Franco. “On Immigration, Activists’ Demands May Exceed Biden Realities.” NPR [Houston] 13 Dec. 2020. NPR Web.
Ibid.
Ibid.