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On day one of
his presidency, Joe Biden signed numerous executive
orders
to undo his predecessor’s “deeply
inhumane”
anti-immigrant policies. These included reversing the “Muslim
ban,”
ensuring non-citizens are counted in the census, pulling back on the
harsh deportation priorities of the past four years, and cutting off
funds to Donald Trump’s most vaunted border wall with Mexico.
For many among us who feared that Biden would hesitate to use his
presidential power to undo Trump’s damage, these actions offer
immediate vindication of the idea that there is indeed a difference
to the lives of marginalized human beings between having a Democrat
versus a Republican in the White House.
Anticipating
Biden’s executive actions on immigration, the Trump
administration created some potentially difficult hurdles to Biden’s
agenda, via a series of so-called Sanctuary for Americans First
Enactment (SAFE) agreements
between a handful of states and the Department of Homeland Security,
which signed them during Trump’s final days in office. These
agreements require cooperation between the Department of Homeland
Security and law enforcement agencies and require a 180-day notice of
intent to terminate. It was Trump’s parting shot to a nation
that uses and abuses immigrant labor, revenue, culture, and other
benefits.
But President
Biden has not restricted himself to executive actions on immigration.
He has sent an outline of a comprehensive
immigration bill
to Congress for consideration that has as its centerpiece a pathway
to citizenship for nearly 11 million undocumented residents of the
nation. It is a bold move but precisely the correct one in a nation
reeling from four toxic years of Donald Trump. Given that Trump rode
into office on the winds of anti-immigrant hate that he vigorously
fanned during his campaign, it is fitting that Biden begins his term
by undoing the damage by whatever means he can - legislative and
executive action.
With a view to
the long-term problems of immigration, Biden’s proposed
bill
includes a mechanism for immigrants registered under the Deferred
Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to immediately apply for
legal residency if they meet certain work or educational criteria.
Those enrolled in the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, as
well as farmworkers, will also be eligible for the same. Others in
the nation without papers as of January 1, 2021, would have a
five-year
pathway
to legal residency if they pay their taxes and pass a background
check, and then have the option of pursuing citizenship three years
later.
It will not be
an easy task to pass such a bill. For decades, congressional failure
to tackle immigration reform has stemmed from a toxic recipe that
includes one-part Republican intransigence and one-part Democratic
spinelessness. Those two forces have worked in tandem to ensure the
nation marches ever-rightward. Democrats will need to adopt the
combative and aggressive posture that Republicans do when they cut
safety net programs or hand more money to billionaires.
As if on cue,
Republicans
denounced the bill
before they had even read it. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida called it
“blanket amnesty,” while Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas
denounced it as “total amnesty.” Iowa senator and
top-ranking Republican, Chuck Grassley, echoed the same, calling it
“mass amnesty,” and a “nonstarter.” Even
Trump’s former White House adviser, Stephen
Miller,
the architect of the cruelest anti-immigrant policies of the past
four years, and who by all rights ought to disappear from public view
in shame, had the audacity to speak out against the bill.
When
Republican critics of the Biden immigration plan use the word
“amnesty” to refer to an arduous pathway to citizenship,
they are already playing hardball. By characterizing the plan in
these terms, they are once more playing into nativist sentiments in
the American public to stoke mass resentment and imply that those
breaking U.S. law will simply be forgiven without consequence. It is
the same dangerous impulses that gave rise to Trump.
If anything,
the word “amnesty” when used in relation to immigrants
ought to be associated most directly with the GOP demigod, Ronald
Reagan,
whose signature on a sweeping immigration bill helped nearly 3
million undocumented immigrants. In order to reconcile the cognitive
dissonance on Reagan’s mythical status and their racist
anti-immigrant hate, conservatives turned to their favorite pastime:
claiming the opposite is true. In a 2013
op-ed,
Cotton claimed that Reagan considered the bill to be “the
biggest mistake of his presidency.” More recently, former
Arizona state senator and U.S. Senate candidate, Kelli Ward, echoed
the same, saying it was Reagan’s “biggest
regret.”
It was not.
A researcher
with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative
organization, wrote on the far-right website the Daily
Caller
that the claim of Reagan’s regret is built on hearsay and
concluded that “Reagan would understand that his law failed to
stop illegal immigration, not because we allowed people to stay, but
because we refused to allow more to come.” He added, “In
his farewell address, he said he wanted an America ‘open to
anyone with the will and heart to get here.’ That doesn’t
sound like regret to me.”
Indeed,
various times over many years, Republicans have openly backed
immigration reform that offered pathways to citizenship. “The
reason we have Donald Trump as a nominee today is because we as
Republicans have failed on this issue,” said
former Republican congressman, Raśl Labrador, a Tea Party
conservative who was one of the “gang of eight,” a
bipartisan group of lawmakers who came tantalizingly close to pushing
through comprehensive immigration reform during President Barack
Obama’s second term. Even Fox News’ virulently nativist
host, Sean Hannity, said nearly a decade ago, “If people are
here, law-abiding, participating for years, their kids are born here,
you know, first secure the border, pathway to citizenship, done.”
The Trump
presidency revealed just what is wrought when anti-immigrant
sentiment infuses the ideology of a political party. By any ethical
standard, the GOP ought to have been cowed after four years of
shamelessly backing a president openly seething with a hatred for
nonwhites and who after fanning the flames of racism for years guided
his white supremacist mob to attack the Capitol itself. But
Republicans have proven over and over again that there is no depth to
which they will not fall to declare self-righteous shock at the
barest hint of progress if it is under Democratic leadership.
Regardless of
political brinkmanship, the well-being, safety and security of
millions of human beings are at stake, people who are forced to exist
in the margins of a society that is content with exploiting them
indefinitely.
This article was produced by Economy
for All,
a project of the Independent Media
Institute.
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