Biden’s plan to offer a path to U.S. citizenship to nearly 11 million undocumented people is perhaps the boldest and most controversial of his proposals to overhaul the American immigration system.
More than 60% of the immigrants the plan would benefit have lived in the U.S. for more than a decade and they have more than 4 million American-born children. The adults are 5% of the American work force, especially in agriculture, construction, and the hospitality industries.
The path to citizenship would allow undocumented immigrants in the U.S. before January 1 to apply for temporary legal status after passing background checks and paying taxes. As “lawful prospective immigrants” they would be authorized to work, join the military, and travel without danger of deportation. After five years they could apply for green cards.
The bill would also usher in one of the most significant demographic shifts in modern U.S. history, allowing millions of people to come out of the shadows, to take higher paying jobs, and to apply for benefits such as welfare, health coverage, and Social Security. Eventually these immigrants would become new voters, with the autonomy and power that confers.
Already barriers are going up in Congress and some states to defeat or at least weaken the new immigration initiatives. In a sign of what might lie ahead, another Biden proposal – a 100 day freeze on deportation – was temporarily blocked by a federal judge in Texas after the attorney general argued that the state would face high costs for services to undocumented immigrants who remained.
Other concerns of the opposition are that new citizens will vote as a solid Democratic bloc, displace American workers, and become a burden on public services. Some predict that any movement toward legalization would encourage more desperate people to come into the United States.
But supporters contend that a shortage of blue-collar workers in low skill jobs highlights the need for immigrants. About 5 million of them now work in jobs designated as “essential.” Among the biggest backers of the Biden plan are employers in industries like dairies and meat-packing plants that rely on immigrants.