The incoming Biden administration will, for the third time in two decades, try to bring Democrats and Republicans in Congress together to offer legal status to more than 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
When combined with border security and enforcement measures, such proposals have often been referred to as “comprehensive immigration reform.” Opponents prefer the term “amnesty” when discussing a pathway to citizenship or any large-scale legalization of undocumented immigrants.
President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to introduce an immigration bill in his first 100 days, and although his team has not disclosed details, his immigration platform states his plan to provide a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants in certain categories.
“It did not come up as a huge issue in the election campaign towards the end,” said Migration Policy Institute senior fellow Muzaffar Chishti in a call with reporters. “But [the] president-elect did make an important announcement during one of the debates that he will send a bill to Congress in the first hundred days. … One can expect that there will be some movement towards immigration reform legislation, but we know that’s an uphill task.”
“During the Trump administration, immigration was the top policy priority,” said MPI policy analyst Sarah Pierce. “They poured everything they had into enacting their agenda. I think under a Biden administration, we’re about to see the pace of immigration changes slow down significantly.”
Those changes could instead come from the legislative branch, whereas the Trump administration went the route of executive actions and departmental rules.
President George W. Bush had hoped to move on immigration reform legislation at the start of his first term in 2001 but was forced to refocus his administration’s agenda after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that year. But immigration returned as a hotly debated issue in Bush’s second term.
“In 2005, when Congress first had the ability to tackle on [sic] immigration, the famous Kennedy-McCain bill, celebrated as one of the hallmarks of bipartisan legislation, never got even voted on in the Senate,” said Chishti. “At that time in 2006, there was a very restrictive Sensenbrenner bill passed by the House, and then it did not go anywhere in the Senate. In 2006, the Senate actually passed a very significant comprehensive immigration reform there by a wide margin. It never went anywhere in the House. Actually, both House and Senate in 2006 passed significant restrictive bills, but they [were] never reconciled. In 2007, there was a prominent, again, comprehensive immigration reform bill, it did not even get a vote.”
When President Barack Obama took office in 2009, immigrant advocates were hopeful he would push the Democratic-controlled Congress to pass a pathway to citizenship, but amid the Great Recession and then the healthcare debate, it did not materialize. Then Democrats were one vote short in the Senate to move on a bipartisan bill that would offer legal status to some younger undocumented immigrants. A version of this was later implemented by executive action as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. After Obama won a second term, a bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight tried again to legalize many illegal immigrants in exchange for some enforcement measures and other reforms in 2013. The bill passed through the Senate but did not make it through the House.
“The House has passed reasonably significant immigration bills, one on the [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], and they had the [Temporary Protected Status] and one for the separate bill for TPS for the Venezuelans passed in the House,” said Chishti. “The prospects of a very large bill going to Congress in the early stages of the administration, I think the chances of that are slight.”
In addition, the Biden administration’s primary focus in early 2021 will be resolving the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. However, the introduction of a White House-backed bill by the end of April would push Congress to act. The question is how big lawmakers will want to go.
Bipartisan Policy Center’s Director of Immigration and Cross-Border Policy Theresa Cardinal Brown said immigrant advocacy groups are skeptical about the idea of an all-inclusive immigration bill, in part, because of the latest failed attempt in 2013.
“The concern is, what do they have to negotiate away in terms of enforcement and border? In terms of what they want, which is legalization. And they feel past efforts have left them losing,” said Brown. “Most immigrant advocates are focused almost exclusively on negotiation and what do they have to give up to get legalization.”
Given the more than 400 miles of physical barrier installed along the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration, Republicans are in better shape in terms of border security than in years past. Republicans may instead focus on mandating the federal employment verification system, known as E-Verify, push for an increase in agricultural workers, or ask for an increase in the number of high-skilled worker visas.
Both Brown and Chishti pointed to smaller, piecemeal legislation, as well as forthcoming coronavirus relief or healthcare bills, as better options that could help Congress get its feet wet before going all-in on a larger bill.
