https://www.nilc.org/issues/immigration-reform-and-executive-actions/biden-administration-day-one-immigration-actions/
DAY ONE IMMIGRATION BILL: U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021
Background
On his first day in office, President Biden sent the Biden-Harris immigration reform bill to Congress, outlining his transformative vision and commitment to building a 21st century immigration system that welcomes immigrants and refugees. While the legislative text has not been made publicly available, the White House released a
fact sheetrevealing key provisions of the bill, known as the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. The members of Congress leading the introduction of the Biden-Harris immigration bill are
Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-CA) in the House and
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) in the Senate.
Select Key Provisions
In a dramatic shift away from the prior administration’s harsh immigration rhetoric, the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 promotes inclusion. The bill removes the word “alien” from immigration law and replaces it with “noncitizen.” This bill is a welcome departure from the racism and xenophobia of the Trump era and provides funding to promote integration and inclusion, increasing English-language instruction, and providing assistance to individuals seeking to become U.S. citizens.
Core to this bill is the creation of new pathways to U.S. citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants who live, work, and are an essential part of the United States. Undocumented individuals are permitted to initially apply for temporary lawful status with the ability to apply for lawful permanent residence after five years, whereas DACA recipients, people with temporary protected status (TPS), and farm workers are eligible to apply for lawful permanent residence immediately. After three years, qualifying lawful permanent residents under this bill are permitted to apply for citizenship.
According to the outline, the bill also:
- Includes provisions from the NO BAN Act, which, among other things, seeks to prevent any president from issuing future bans such as the discriminatory Muslim and African bans — bans the Biden administration rescinded on Day One — by limiting dangerously overbroad executive authority to suspend people from entering the U.S.
- Aims to reduce the ballooning immigration court backlog by improving technology and expanding training for immigration judges. In an effort to make immigration court proceedings more fair, the bill provides immigration judges with discretion to review cases and grant relief to certain individuals. The bill also authorizes funding for legal orientation programs and counsel for children and vulnerable individuals.
- Supports asylum-seekers by eliminating the one-year filing deadline for asylum claims and allocating additional funding to reduce asylum application backlogs.
- Protects vulnerable populations by raising the annual cap of U visas from 10,000 to 30,000.
- Removes barriers to family-based immigration, repealing the three- and ten-year bars, as well as the permanent bar on admission for individuals unlawfully present in the United States from adjusting to lawful status.
- Seeks to reduce lengthy visa backlogs by recapturing immigrant visas lost to bureaucratic delays.
- Improves protections for immigrant workers, ensuring that victims of serious labor violations are afforded an opportunity to apply for relief from deportation without fear of retaliation.
- Creates a $4 billion four-year interagency plan that would provide assistance to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to address the underlying causes of migration, and creates new systems for Central Americans to initiate the process — from within their countries — of seeking protection and resettlement to the United States or other partner countries.
- Calls for the deployment of improved technologies at U.S. ports of entry and in between ports of entry. While the bill’s fact sheet mentions that the DHS inspector general is authorized to conduct oversight of this technology, the fact sheet does not address to what extent it will include robust privacy laws to prevent the sharing of data between local, state, federal, and foreign agencies for use in immigration enforcement. Mass data collection of personal information and the storage of sensitive information is increasingly vulnerable to misuse by government employees and foreign actors.
The fact sheet does not specifically address immigrants’ access to health care and nutrition supports for those obtaining lawful immigration status under this bill. Current law denies many types of immigrants access to such programs, leading to harmful effects that have been profoundly exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular because of the high number of immigrants who are essential workers. Given the importance of addressing these access barriers, we will closely analyze and advocate for immigrant-inclusive proposals in this and other legislation.
