WASHINGTON -- Democrats filed President Joe Biden's immigration bill Thursday, facing steep odds as they attempt to create the first major path to U.S. citizenship for unauthorized migrants in nearly 35 years.
The bill is the centerpiece of Biden's broad strategy to forge a more humane immigration system, and it would grant legal status to about 11 million people, mostly from Mexico and Central America.
The legislation faces significant hurdles in a divided Senate still reeling from the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, who often tapped into anti-immigration rhetoric to fire up his campaign rallies.
Biden has expressed hope for passing a bipartisan measure, and the U.S. Citizenship Act marks the first major effort since the Senate passed an immigration overhaul in 2013 and that effort died in the House. But it is unclear how aggressively he will court Republicans needed for his proposal to pass the Senate.
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The U.S. government has not passed a major citizenship bill since 1986, when amnesty legislation signed by Republican President Ronald Reagan legalized nearly 3 million people.
"If Republicans want to come forward and work on immigration, I think the president is open to working with anyone who wants to get something done and get a bill to his desk," said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the early negotiations. "We're open to a conversation with anyone about this, but we think this is a much more comprehensive way to deal with this issue than just simply a wall."
But even as he prepares to push hard for the broadest possible overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, Biden and his aides have started to signal openness to more targeted approaches that could win citizenship for smaller, discrete groups of immigrants living in the United States without authorization. At a CNN town hall Tuesday, he said such efforts would be acceptable "in the meantime."
In a private phone call with activists Wednesday, top immigration aides to Biden said they supported what they called a "multiple trains" strategy, which could target citizenship for "Dreamers," the young immigrants brought into the country as children; farmworkers who have toiled for years in U.S. fields; and others.
Smaller bills could move forward as the president tries to build support for the broader legislation, according to two people who were on the call.
If he chooses to move step by step, Biden appears unlikely to anger the most powerful pro-immigration groups, which are embracing a more pragmatic strategy after spectacular defeats under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
For more than two decades, activists have tried and failed to secure passage of a broad overhaul of the nation's immigration laws that would create a path to citizenship for most immigrants living in the United States without authorization, a faster path for Dreamers, expanded visa access for highly skilled workers and a new program for seasonal agricultural laborers.
They are betting that Biden will struggle even more than his predecessors did to win support from a Republican Party that became more anti-immigrant during the Trump administration.
GOP OPPOSITION
Indeed, Republicans have signaled little support for Biden's approach.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a backer of the 2013 bill, called the latest measure a "blanket amnesty."
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who voted with Democrats to convict Trump, touted his own measure this week that would increase the minimum wage "while ensuring businesses cannot hire illegal immigrants."
"We must protect American workers," Romney said in a tweet Tuesday.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., announced his opposition to the plan soon after it was unveiled Thursday.
"This immigration plan is a disaster," Cotton said. "It would devastate our economy by flooding our workforce with millions of new workers during a pandemic. And it does nothing to secure our borders, yet grants mass amnesty, welfare benefits -- even voting rights -- to over 11 million people who came here illegally. It's a nonstarter," the lawmaker from Little Rock said in a statement.
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The measure also faces opposition from Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark.
"Senator Boozman believes our immigration system is broken and in dire need of reform," his spokesman, Matthew Wester, said in a statement Thursday. "Because this proposal doesn't provide sufficient border security or prioritize enforcement and compliance, it fails a basic test of acceptability.
"Additionally, rewarding people who broke our laws is not something we should incentivize. Hardworking Americans want a system that's fair and reasonable, and this bill misses the mark."
U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., also criticized the legislation.
"It's insulting that the Biden Administration is proposing large scale amnesty to illegal immigrants while thousands of Americans are unemployed and struggling," the lawmaker from Jonesboro said in a statement Thursday. "This legislation creates incentive for migrants to illegally cross our borders and fails to put a concrete immigration system at the border wall. I will continue to support immigration reform that allows entry to those who share our beliefs and values while putting America first."
U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., also panned the administration's approach.
"President Biden's radical immigration approach is a non-starter. Instead of delivering a stronger and more effective system, this deeply partisan plan incentivizes illegal immigration, rewards those who knowingly broke U.S. laws, and fails to prioritize operational control of our borders," the lawmaker from Rogers said in a statement Thursday.
"As the pandemic continues, it's unacceptable that the Biden Administration's early actions are seemingly more focused on open borders than schools and businesses."
The proposal was praised by Arkansas United, an immigrant-rights advocacy group. It said the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 "would modernize a broken immigration system, help our country grow its workforce, keep families together and rebuild our economy."
"It's time for Congress to pass common-sense solutions that welcome millions of immigrants who have been an integral part of our communities and country for decades. A reliable road to citizenship and serious investment on immigrants and refugee integration is a bipartisan issue the American people and Arkansans support," said Mireya Reith, the group's executive director.
BILL'S DETAILS
Biden's bill includes some enforcement provisions such as increased border technology to interdict drug traffickers and smugglers, higher penalties for employers who exploit unauthorized laborers in the United States, and increased funding for immigration courts.
But E-Verify, which checks a person's legal status to work in this country, "will not be mandatory" for U.S. employers, and Biden has said he would not expand the border wall.
Mainly the bill takes an expansive approach: It promotes integration of immigrants and refugees, reduces yearslong backlogs to immigrate to the United States, and creates two major pathways to citizenship.
Farmworkers, migrants who arrived in the United States as children, and people with temporary protected status -- granted to those whose homelands are deemed too dangerous to return to -- would have the fastest route to naturalization. They would immediately become eligible for green cards and could apply for citizenship after three years.
Millions of others would be allowed to apply for citizenship after eight years, longer than the current five-year requirement but shorter than the path the Senate approved in 2013.
All applicants would have to pass background checks and have been in the United States as of Jan. 1, a requirement intended to discourage a migration surge to the southwestern border.
Biden has characterized his bill as a way to reimagine immigration in the United States after the Trump administration clamped down on it, and the measure addresses details such as replacing the word "alien" with "noncitizen." Where his predecessor often cast immigrants as criminals, Biden's White House calls them "neighbors, colleagues, parishioners, community leaders, friends, and loved ones."
Biden tapped the children of immigrants to shepherd his immigration bill through Congress. The bill sponsors are Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., the sixth of seven children raised by Mexican immigrants in Southern California, and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., the son of Cuban immigrants raised in a tenement in Union City, N.J.
"We have an economic and moral imperative to pass big, bold and inclusive immigration reform -- reform that leaves no one behind," Menendez said Wednesday evening. He criticized advocates for not being willing to fight for legislation that would eventually legalize all the country's immigrant population.
"We must not start with concessions out of the gate. We are not going to start with 2 million undocumented people instead of 11 million," he said. "We will never win an argument that we don't have the courage to make. We must make our case for bold, inclusive and lasting immigration reform."
Advocates for immigrants cheered the bill, the broad outlines of which Biden sent to Congress on his first day in office, but said they doubted it would pass. Democrats hold the House, but they need at least 10 Republican votes to reach the 60-vote threshold to pass the Senate.
Advocates and dozens of lawmakers are urging Senate Democrats to instead legalize at least 5 million migrants this year through the budget reconciliation process, which requires a simple majority to pass. That group would include essential workers, migrants who arrived as children and people with temporary protected status.
Erika Andiola, an immigrant from Mexico whose relatives faced deportation under the Obama administration, called the Biden bill "a good symbolic gesture, but it's not enough to protect people like me, my family and my community."
Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, an advocacy organization, said passing citizenship through reconciliation is "the best shot we have this year."
"There is a point where Joe Biden is going to have to decide," said Nicole Melaku, executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans, a coalition of immigrant advocacy groups. "There is a moment where every disposable tool in his toolbox will need to be pulled out whether or not Republicans come along."
Senior administration officials who promoted the bill declined to say whether they are considering using the reconciliation process to pass citizenship.
"It's just too early to speculate about it right now," an aide said.
While activists are willing to let Biden try for a bipartisan deal this year, they have warned that they will not wait forever.
"We want 11 million people legalized. That is our North Star," said Sharry, a veteran of immigration wars in the nation's capital for more than 30 years. "But we can't come home empty-handed. We're not going to adopt an all-or-nothing approach. We have to achieve a breakthrough."
For those like Sharry, that is a major shift, and it could herald fierce debates over whether Democrats should use parliamentary tactics in the Senate to ram through individual immigration measures without any Republican support.
A Democratic aide familiar with the legislation said if immigration activists ask for only "half a loaf," they should not be surprised when they end up going home with just a single slice of bread.
Information for this article was contributed by Maria Sacchetti and Matt Viser of The Washington Post; by Michael D. Shear of The New York Times; and by Frank Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.