WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Wednesday proposed sweeping new legislation that would overhaul the country’s immigration system, part of a broader effort to signal his administration considers the issue a priority even as it prepares to grapple with an ongoing pandemic and economy that has lost tens of millions of jobs.
Biden also issued a series of executive actions to ease immigration restrictions, using the first hours of his presidency to immediately reverse many of the policies enacted by former President Donald Trump.
Coupled with the legislative proposal, the executive actions signal how Biden plans a new direction for the country’s immigration policy, one that emphasizes a less restrictive approach to immigrants and what White House officials call a more humane approach to border security.
It’s a stark reversal from four years of the Trump administration, which sought to make border security — including construction of a wall — one of the hallmarks of his presidency.
“We need a complete overhaul that protects the American people but is also consistent with our values,” a White House official said.
Immigration has bedeviled politicians in both parties for decades, most recently in 2013 when the Senate passed a comprehensive bill that would have established a pathway to citizenship for many undocumented immigrants. But the legislation failed to pass the House after Republican lawmakers harshly criticized its citizenship proposal.
Trump would later campaign aggressively on increasing immigration restrictions, using the issue to win the GOP presidential nomination in 2016 and, eventually, the presidency.
Biden’s proposed bill would let many undocumented immigrants become citizens after eight years, if they were present in the country at the beginning of this year. The immigrants could apply for a green card after five years if they pass background checks and pay their taxes, according to the proposal, and three years later could apply for citizenship.
The legislation would also address border security — including additional funding for technology to monitor the border — and what Biden officials say are the underlying issues in Central America that cause immigrants to flee to the United States.
The proposal itself, and its timing, pleased some immigration advocates, who considered it an opening bid for what they hope are four years of favorable policymaking.
“The fact he’s kicking off his administration with a bill that sends that message and that sense of urgency to Congress is very hopeful to us,” said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center. “That sends a message that he is serious about this.”
Biden’s executive orders, meanwhile, halted the so-called “Muslim ban,” which restricted travel from several primarily Muslim countries, paused construction of Trump’s border wall and formally reinstated Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA.
The Trump administration’s efforts to repeal DACA, which provides legal protection for undocumented immigrants who served in the military or were brought to the United States as children, had been blocked by the Supreme Court last year. Biden officials said the executive order to formally reinstate it simply beefs up those protections.
Biden has said that his priority as president would be managing the federal government’s response to the pandemic, especially the distribution of a vaccine that has lagged initial expectations. He and other administration officials have also put a premium on ushering a nearly $2 trillion economic relief bill through Congress.
But he has faced pressure to act on immigration from liberal activists, many of whom have argued for years that the Democratic Party hasn’t done enough to fight for the immigrant community.
Hincapié said she hopes that Biden will continue to undo other immigration-related rules from the Trump administration, which she said have hurt many immigrant communities and families in the country.
“There’s a lot of work to undo,” she said.
