Immigration reform is undoubtedly a controversial and argumentative topic for many people. According to the Pew Research Center, the Trump office lessened the number of undocumented immigrants in the country. While he pointed out several justifications for this move, from population caps to human trafficking, in 2019, he argued the action was primarily economic.
However, the recent immigration reform plan could welcome more immigrants and offer advantages to asylum seekers. President Biden announced an initiative to provide citizenship to several undocumented immigrants married to U.S. permanent residents. That means an undocumented spouse of a U.S. citizen can apply for a green card and eventually gain citizenship without leaving the country.
However, the recent Biden immigration reform proposals will address this without significantly altering the immigration law. The information below covers everything you need about the latest immigration reform bill.
Impact of Immigrants on the Job Market and Wages
Below are the potential impacts that immigrants have on the current job market and people's wages, respectively:
Job Market
The idea that immigrants steal many jobs from citizens was the rationale behind Trump's stringent immigration restrictions. On the face of it, this seems like a logical conclusion for a group that includes almost 11 million immigrants.
However, advocates argue that this argument assumes the dynamic aspect of the current job market. Contrary to popular belief, immigrants contribute to the expansion of our economy as consumers who purchase goods and services. Some researchers argue that deporting immigrants would shrink the country's economic output.
According to the Bipartisan Research Centre, doing that could result in an approximately $1.6 trillion decrease in GDP (gross domestic product). In addition, undocumented immigrants often pursue low-skilled job opportunities that most citizens have less interest in, like those related to forestry, agriculture, and labor-intensive fields.
Also, according to the New American Economy (NAE) report, immigrants are highly likely to take after-hours and weekend jobs, which most citizens are less interested in. Generally speaking, immigrants help fill a crucial role in the job market, contributing to the overall growth of your economy.
Wages
The idea that letting more foreign workers compete for jobs in the country will lower wages for current workers is one of the most frequent arguments from critics. The fundamental principles of supply and demand seem to back up this claim, meaning when the workers' numbers increase, the amount that employers must pay will decrease.
However, several research studies show that immigrants' impact on the wages of low-skilled jobs is relatively small. According to researchers Giovanni Peri and Gianmarco Ottaviano, rising immigration had little impact, approximately 0.6 percent, on the current wages of natural-born citizens.
While these jobs could decrease, that will only occur in some fields. Supporters of this immigration reform argue that several immigrant workers are a blessing for businesses because they will benefit from reduced production costs.
On the other hand, demand for more skilled workers will also grow. Theoretically, this increases the demand and need for high-skilled jobs, which undocumented immigrants are less interested in. That means the immigration reforms will undoubtedly boost employees' wages slightly for jobs requiring a university or college degree.
An Overview of the Immigration Reform Proposals by Joe Biden
Generally speaking, the best immigration policies guarantee border security and provide immigrants with a feasible route to citizenship and legal residency. On day one in office, President Joe Biden had to send an immigration bill to Congress to help restore American values and humanity in the immigration system.
The US Citizenship Act of 2021 establishes a new system to help responsibly manage and secure our borders, keep our communities and families safe and better manage immigration across the country. In other words, this bill aims to modernize our immigration legal justice system, help unite families, responsibly manage our borders using smart investments, address the cause of immigration, grow our economy, and ensure our country is a habitable refuge for people fleeing violence or persecution.
The immigration reform bill presented to Congress by Joe Biden will help change the immigration system in various ways. For example, it will:
Strengthen Labor Protections and Provide Immigrants Pathways to Citizenship
These immigration reforms will strengthen labor protections and provide immigrant avenues to citizenship in various ways. For example by:
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Creating a Pathway to Naturalization or Citizenship for All Undocumented Immigrants
Immigration reform aims to provide a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants. Under this reform, you can apply for temporary legal status if you are an undocumented immigrant living in the country. Then, after five (5) years, you can apply for permanent residency after passing all security and criminal record checks and filing your taxes.
Under this law, immigrant farmworkers, TPS holders, and Dreamers who meet specific requirements could immediately qualify for a green card. After three (3) years, all people with green cards who demonstrate adequate knowledge of country civics, mastery of excellent English, and pass all additional background reviews can apply for naturalization or legal citizenship.
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Helping Families Come Together
This bill also reforms the immigration system centered on families by reclaiming unused visas, clearing backlogs, raising the limit on per-country visas, and eliminating the lengthy waiting period. The bill also eliminates several laws that separate families, including the “three-and ten-year bars.”
Further, the bill helps bring families together by explicitly eliminating discrimination that LGBTQ families face and encouraging permanent partnerships. Additionally, this bill also offers protections to children, widows, and Filipino army veterans who served alongside us during World War II.
Before this bill, under the Trump administration, undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens had to travel to their home countries to apply for naturalization through a consulate. This process would take approximately three to ten years to complete, keeping several families apart.
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Embracing Diversity
The immigration reform bill has a NO BAN ACT, which discourages discrimination against immigrants based on a person's religion and restricts the authority of a president to issue any future ban.
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Encouraging Refugee and Immigrant Integration and Naturalization or Citizenship
The Bidens immigration bill also introduces a funding system for local government and the state, community-based groups, educational institutions, and private organizations to help them expand programs that promote the following for those seeking to become naturalized:
- Integration and inclusion
- Intensification of the teaching of English
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Addressing Backlogs in Employment-Based Visas
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the bill aims to address the backlogs in employment-based visas, remove per-country visa limits, and lessen the lengthy wait periods for visas. If you graduate from any university with a STEM degree, you can remain in the country and work legally, boosting the economy.
If you are a worker in a low-wage sector, you will also have an opportunity to apply for a green card to live here lawfully.
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Improving the Verification Process and Protecting Immigrant Workers From Being Mistreated
The immigration bill requires the Department of Labor and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) to organize a commission comprising employers, civil rights, and labor organizations to assist in making recommendations for improving the verification process for employment.
If you are a worker who has been convicted of a grave labor violation, you could qualify for U-visa relief when you work with workers' protection agencies.
Give Smart Border Controls Priority
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, one of the aims of immigration reform is to modernize the immigration system. The smart and advanced border controls help improve the immigration system in various ways. For example, they can help:
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Replace the Current Resources at the Border With Infrastructure and Technology
The bill proposes an allocation of budget to help the DHS's secretary prepare and execute a technology deployment plan to improve the capacities to detect narcotics at points of entry and speed up screening. That includes high-end scanning technology to ensure that passenger and commercial freight rail and vehicles entering the country through any land entry point are thoroughly scanned.
The bill also authorizes funding of plans to help improve the infrastructure at each point of entry to improve the capacities to halt, disrupt, detect, and prevent illegal drugs from finding their way into the country and process all asylum seekers.
The immigration reforms will authorize DHS’s secretary to create and execute a viable plan to help secure and manage southern borders between all ports of entry, focusing on flexible remedies that help do the following:
- Expand the capacity to detect unlawful activities
- Assess the efficiency of the border security measures
For privacy purposes, the DHS director general has the authority to conduct inspections to ensure that the technological advancement employed serves the agency's legitimate purposes.
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Protect and Manage the Border and the Border Communities
Immigration reform also aims to provide funding to help train border agents and officers to improve professionalism and safety in their work duties.
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Suppress Illicit Organizations
The immigration reform bill also strengthens and ensures the prosecution of criminals who exploit migrants through trafficking and smuggling networks. The bill also expands intelligence collection, investigations, and all analyses conducted under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act to heighten sanctions against illegal drug traffickers and their networks and organizations.
Biden’s immigration reform bill also requires the law enforcement authorities to collaborate with the DHS and the state’s secretary to expand and improve transitional task forces against gangs in the central part of the country.
Address the Fundamental Migration Causes
The bill also funds Biden's $4 billion interagency plan to fix the underlying fundamental causes of immigration in our country, particularly by increasing the aid offered to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to reduce the inherent migration triggers such as:
- Poverty
- Violence
- Corruption
The bill also provides legal and safe channels for immigrants to seek protection. For example, by setting up designated processing centers to help process and register displaced people for asylum resettlement or other legal migration avenues.
The effort to strengthen the immigration court and safeguard vulnerable families is another important aspect of the immigration reform bill. The bill lessens immigration court delays, improves the immigration court’s technology, and expands continued training and education for immigration court judges to help achieve this.
Most importantly, the bill focuses on restoring balance and fairness in the immigration justice system by giving adjudicators and judges the discretion to evaluate each immigrant case and grant the necessary relief to the qualifying individuals.
Additionally, funding is permitted to promote legal orientation programs and advise vulnerable individuals, children, and others whenever necessary to guarantee a prompt and fair settlement of their cases. Under this bill, school districts will also receive funding to help educate unaccompanied immigrant children while pointing out the sponsor's obligation to these children.
The bill also aims to streamline the immigration system to help those seeking asylum by removing the 1-year statute of limitations for submitting an asylum claim and authorizing the funding necessary to help reduce application delays.
If you are a T-visa, U-visa, or VAWA applicant, Joe Biden’s immigration reform bill increases your legal protections in many ways. For example, it increases the U-visa limit from 30,000 to up to 50,000. You will also have more protections under this bill if you are an immigrant helping the country's troops.
Are There Other Immigration Measures by the Biden Administration?
Another recent immigration measure by Joe Biden is a policy that will aid in Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients. The former President Obama administration first introduced the DACA program as deportation relief for all children who arrived in the country as undocumented immigrants.
Under President Biden's recent program, companies or employers that employ any DACA recipient can apply for a work visa for him/her, which increases his/her chances of qualifying for naturalization or permanent residency.
While critics challenged Biden's immigration reform plans, saying they are similar to former President Trump's policies, which pushed for strict approaches to regulating and controlling migration, these laws are helpful and visionary.
Find an Immigration Attorney Near Me
Whether you plan to seek asylum or apply for citizenship, navigating the complex and ever-changing immigration laws requires the legal help of a seasoned attorney. A skilled attorney can help you understand your rights, prepare your petitions, and represent you in immigration court to increase your odds of securing a favorable outcome.
We invite you to call our reliable attorneys at Orange County Immigration Attorney at 714-909-0426 if you have any more questions about the recent immigration reform laws or want legal assistance on an immigration issue.