Joe Biden’s Immigration Plan

By Patricia Elizee, Esq.

Today, there are over 45 million immigrants living in the United States, which is the most of any country in the world. Joe Biden has stated that he completely disagrees with current President Donald Trump’s immigration ideology as well as the policies he put in place throughout his 4 years in office. Biden plans to not only implement new policies but to also get rid of most of the immigration policies put into place by the Trump administration.

Joe Biden stated that his first 100 days in office will consist of attempting to get rid of Trump’s “cruel and senseless” policies which he implemented after the Obama-Biden administration. Biden plans to stop prosecuting parents for minor immigration infractions used for intimidation purposes and focus on reuniting them with their children who were separated from them. Today the parents of over 540 children can’t be found and haven’t seen their children since they were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border. These separations happened because of a Trump Administration policy called “zero tolerance.” Under this policy, all adults held at the border were referred for criminal prosecution, with no exceptions for adults traveling with children or those seeking asylum.

Biden also plans on reversing the strict asylum policies which have been enacted. In 2018 Donald Trump announced that the United States will be blocking people who enter our ports of entry seeking asylum. Joe Biden will lift those restrictions as well as the restrictions in place that prevent victims of gang and domestic violence from receiving asylum as well as members of the LGBTQ+ community who are vulnerable in other parts of the world. Asylum seekers would also attain better resources such as safe shelters and government aid while awaiting the status of their asylum claims. The former Vice President plans to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and their families. The Obama-Biden administration implemented the DACA program to protect the undocumented youth of the United States by giving them the opportunity to attain employment authorization for two years (with a renewal option) and Social Security numbers. The Trump administration attempted to terminate the DACA program. However, the Supreme Court didn’t allow him to do so for now. Joe Biden fears that if he isn’t elected as president, Donald Trump would keep pushing to remove the program. Biden also wants to order an immediate review of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) which helps nationals of a country that feel unsafe returning to their country. He wants to review and extend TPS to allow TPS holders to stay in the United States. The Trump administration has already moved forward with terminating TPS, a 3- judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that President Donald Trump has the right to end the policy and TPS holders residing in the United States will be removed in 2021.

According to Biden, the Trump administration has implemented a rigorous naturalization process which makes it extremely difficult for green card holders to become citizens. Trump has done this by increasing processing times, intensified the examination of applications, and unsuccessfully attempted to increase immigration filing fees. Biden plans on lifting these barriers that have been put in front of the naturalization process and restoring the process to its original state.

Following this cleanse of Trump’s immigration policies, Biden plans on shifting the United States with a modernist immigration approach. Biden wants to ensure that the United States becomes welcoming to immigrants since he is aware of the benefits they provide such as economic prosperity for the country as a whole. In 2014, immigrants paid an estimated $328 billion in state, local, and federal taxes. He wants to work with congress on becoming a more diverse country and enhance our immigration system to see some substantial economic growth in the long run.

Lastly, Biden wants to invest in enhanced technology to provide safe entry into the country. He also plans on using federal agencies to restrict criminal organizations from smuggling people, weapons, and illegal narcotics. He intends to cooperate with our neighboring countries and other countries where many of our immigrants come from instead of seeing them as adversaries. He wants to allocate more resources to helping the immigration sector of the country instead of being used to impede immigration to the United States. For example, the resources being used to build a wall between the United States and Mexico should be used in another way.

Patricia Elizee is the managing partner of Elizee Law Firm, an immigration and family law firm located at 1110 Brickell Avenue, Suite 315, Miami, Florida 33131. She can be reached at Ph: 305-371-8846