President-elect Joe Biden plans to unveil a sweeping immigration bill on Day One of his administration, hoping to provide an eight-year path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal status, a massive reversal from the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies.
The legislation puts Biden on track to deliver on a major campaign promise important to Latino voters and other immigrant communities after four years of President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies and mass deportations. It provides one of the fastest pathways to citizenship for those living without legal status of any measure in recent years, but it fails to include the traditional trade-off of enhanced border security favored by many Republicans, making passage in a narrowly divided Congress in doubt.
We dive into Biden’s immigration plan, plus other latest news from D.C.
With files from the Associated Press.
Guests:
Seung Min Kim, White House reporter for The Washington Post; she tweets
Matt Barreto, professor of political science and Chicano Studies at UCLA; he was on the Biden campaign to direct their Latino polling and messaging research and is the co-founder of the political consulting firm LD Insights; he tweets
Mario Parker, White House reporter for Bloomberg; he tweets