WASHINGTON – Democrats unveiled legislation yesterday for President Joe Biden’s plan to create a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, saying there is no justification for denying them a permanent home in the United States.
Top Democrats said the legislation, blocked for more than a decade by Republicans, is “long overdue”, noting that most of those it will address have lived in the country for many years, with homes, businesses and US-born children and grandchildren.
It will offer an eight-year path to citizenship for most of the 11 million.
Some, including farmworkers and people brought to the country as children – so-called Dreamers – will get an immediate path to permanent residence or a “green card”, allowing them to work legally.
Others addressed include thousands of people who remained in the US for years under temporary protected status due to violent upheavals or natural disasters in their home countries.
And, underscoring the Biden administration’s reversal from former president Donald Trump’s strident anti-immigration policies, the legislation also proposes to stop branding undocumented immigrants as “aliens” in US law.
Instead, they will be called the less pejorative “non-citizens”. – AFP, February 19, 2021
