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Its finally a new day in America. A day immigrants like myself have been hoping and praying for an end to the former administrations cruel and inhumane policies that attempted to strip our community of its humanity.

President Bidens executive actions ending the Muslim ban, halting the construction of the border wall and freezing deportations and his introduction of the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 are critical first steps to recognizing immigrants' value and contributions to this country now, during this pandemic, and throughout history.

But immigrant rights advocates, many of us who have been in this fight for decades, cant help but feel wary. We still remember then-candidate Barack ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaGulf grows between GOP's McConnell, McCarthy Barack Obama to Michelle: 'I understand completely why you are a fashion icon' Press: Memo to McCarthy: 'Cut the crap' MORE making the exact same pathway to citizenship promise in 2008. As a former undocumented immigrant and young activist, I remember the sense of hope that accompanied President Obamas election. But I also recall the sense of defeat I, and so many others, felt eight years later. When Obama left office, the long-promised pathway to citizenship remained a pipe dream and he had deported more people than any previous administration a record not even Donald TrumpDonald TrumpGeorgia secretary of state opens investigation into Lin Wood over illegal voting allegations Schiff lobbying Newsom to be appointed California AG: reports Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick lies in honor in Rotunda MORE topped.

The Biden/Harris administration has a critical opportunity to create an America that actually lives up to the words etched along the base of the Statue of Liberty. This is the America my parents spoke to me and my sister about when we joined them in the States from Guyana when I was 10 years old. A land of opportunity, a welcoming and thriving country that knew that what it gave its people, they would give back in multitudes. Thats the vision of America that has been lost in Washington, but its a vision the immigrant community and I have not stopped fighting to realize.

If there was one lesson I learned from the Obama years, it was that Democratic control of Washington does not guarantee justice for my community. It is a lesson I plan to apply during the Biden/Harris administration. We must now start down the long path towards justice. To begin, the organization I lead, the New York Immigration Coalition, has committed to spend $1 million to rally every single member of Congress from New York including Senate Majority Leader Chuck SchumerChuck SchumerCapitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick lies in honor in Rotunda Democrats offer resolution denouncing white supremacists ahead of Trump trial Lobbying world MORE (D-N.Y.) to transform our immigration system.

The sweeping immigration bill President Biden introduced on his first day in office includes a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants living in the United States and will erase the heinous legacy of the last four years by restoring the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) programs, improving immigration courts and reuniting the still-separated families.

While this is a welcome first step, we must remain vigilant to ensure we dont fall back on restoring the status quo, where real immigration reform falls through the cracks and my community is forced back into the shadows. I remember what it was like growing up undocumented and feeling that daily sense of uncertainty until I became a citizen 10 years later. And now, it is extremely painful to see members of my family who are tax-paying, law-abiding members of their communities and who love this country denied the ability to fully participate in it.

They are thankful to the immigrant voters that came out in record numbers to push President Biden and Vice President Harris to victory. From Arizona to New York, millions of immigrants braved a pandemic, a full-blown voter suppression campaign, and a federal government hostile to our very existence to vote.

But we did not fight this hard to settle for a reset to the days before Donald Trump. The brutal reality is that this country has failed immigrant communities long before Trump came to the White House. This is the reality my family lives with every day.

Ending this entrenched injustice and transforming our immigration system will not be easy. But this is a historic opportunity that we cant let slip by. We need to restore humanity and justice to our immigration system, stop deportations and detentions, increase our refugee limits and reinstate a real asylum process for those fleeing persecution.

Donald Trumps presidency was a devastating descent into hate but Trump didnt create the bigotry he stoked; its been there for many, many years. As we build back better, we have an opportunity to not just erase the damage of the last four years, but to move to a new future for immigrants in America, reset our place in the world and finally become that true beacon of hope. We demand President Biden and our members of Congress seize it.

Rovika Rajkishun is co-executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition.

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Immigration reform can't wait | TheHill - The Hill

Just before leaving office in January 2009, President George W. Bush told an interviewer that if he had one thing to do over, in retrospect, he should have pushed immigration reform right after the 04 election and not Social Security reform. Why? Because, he said, I happen to believe a system that is so broken that humans become contraband is a system that really needs to be re-examined.

We agree, and wish his efforts in 2007 to pass a bipartisan immigration reform bill had come to fruition. In 2012, under the Obama administration, the last time there was a serious push for comprehensive reforms, Bush reminded lawmakers that Not only do immigrants help build our economy, they invigorate our soul. America can be a lawful society and a welcoming society at the same time.

After passing the Senate with bipartisan support in 2013, those reforms died on the vine in the Republican-controlled House the following year.

We offer this brief history lesson because it was precisely those failures that led to the rise of Donald Trumps draconian zero-tolerance immigration policies that reached their nadir in June 2018 when, under a court order, the Trump administration revealed that 2,700 children had been separated from their migrant parents at the border and sent to mass detention centers or foster care a practice former first lady Laura Bush rightly called cruel and immoral and this newspaper called counter to who we are as a people.

On June 20, 2018, as public outcry grew, Trump signed an executive order to keep families together at the border, but his policy that criminally prosecuted all adults illegally crossing the border continued, and the number of children who were taken from their families hundreds still not reunited is now estimated to be more than 5,000.

And thats just one example of the hundreds of changes by the Trump administration to immigration policy, all of which were enacted through executive order, memoranda or regulatory rule change.

As our Dianne Solis and Alfredo Corchado reported shortly after Joe Bidens electoral victory, Reconstruction of the immigration system for a nation whose origin story is all about immigration will be a difficult process. Among the barriers: Republicans who wont support legislation and Republican leaders who know how to go to court. Not every change or reversal can be done by a stroke of the pen. Some will require going through a long regulatory process. The effort will be Herculean: The Trump administration made more than 400 changes to the immigration system.

That report proved prescient this past week when the Biden administrations 100-day pause on certain deportations got hung up in court.

What should be clear is that court battles are a poor substitute for comprehensive immigration reform. After all, the proper role of courts is to enforce the law as it stands, and this is really a fight over what the law should be. Whats needed is for the Congress and the president to hammer out reforms.

Doing so would prevent new administrations from immediately undoing the policies of their predecessors through executive orders and rule changes that are then challenged in court, thus creating more chaos in what should be an area clearly governed by the rule of law in a predictable and consistent legal framework.

Sadly, the only thing predictable about immigration policy today is that itll lead to more hyper-partisan warfare. Among the casualties will be every day Americans who depend on a stable immigration system, as well as those seeking asylum from violence and poverty in their native lands. And thats to say nothing of the damage done to agencies and institutions and our national reputation.

There is a cost to slamming the door on many forms of legal immigration, including turning away asylum-seekers at the border, slashing the number of refugees accepted into the country annually as well as the number of H-1B visas for skilled workers. And that cost has been to our standing in the world as a nation founded by immigrants on the principle of individual rights that still welcomes those legally seeking refuge in this country.

All of which brings us to President Bidens early steps toward immigration reform. In addition to his executive orders halting further construction on the border wall, revoking the travel ban on majority Muslim nations, and preserving the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Biden offered his own comprehensive immigration reform bill, the U.S. Citizens Act of 2021, on his first day in office.

In the weeks and months ahead, well be weighing in on the specifics of the plan, which includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and the nearly 700,000 Dreamers in DACA; modernizing border security, labor protections, immigration courts, and the entire asylum-seeking process through investments in new personnel and technology; and, finally, by providing $4 billion in financial assistance over four years to Central American countries to better facilitate legal migration and address the underlying causes of migration conditioned on their ability to reduce the endemic corruption, violence, and poverty that causes people to flee their home countries.

As Texans, we understand better than most folks the need for secure borders and consistent immigration policies. But we also understand what former President Bush said in 2019, that amid all the complications of policy we should never forget that immigration is a blessing and a strength.

We retain hope that our elected officials in Washington can see immigration not as a purely partisan issue, but as an issue crucial to the security and economic well-being of our state and country, an issue requiring compromise, congeniality and comprehensive reform, and, for the good of the country, living up to our national motto: E pluribus unumOut of many, one.

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Why the stakes are far too high to kick comprehensive immigration reform down the road again - The Dallas Morning News

History is likely to repeat itself with President Joe Bidens immigration proposal.Yes, the plan is laudable for its twin goals of providing a path to citizenship for the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants and reinstating visas for highly skilled workers. But as the idiom goes, this dog wont hunt. Thats because both sides of the aisle in the U.S. Congress will find aspects of the legislation objectionable. Even if the Democrats eliminate the filibuster so they can pass legislation with their ever-so-slim control of the Senate, Democratic lawmakers themselves are unlikely to reach a consensus, as experience shows.

This is a repeat of the political battles of the Obama years, when the Republicans staunchly supported skilled immigration while the Democrats held U.S. companies and their would-be workers hostage to demands to provide citizenship to the undocumented. The Democrats have also battled each other, as when Sen. Dick Durbin held up bipartisan legislation to remove discriminatory per-country limits on visas, which led immigration-advocacy groups to call him a racist. Sadly, the results of the Biden plan will be the same: warfare between and within the parties; no immigration reform; and a further demolition of U.S. competitiveness.

There is a simple solution: Separate skilled and unskilled immigration into separate billsand let each piece of legislation stand on its own merits.Easing opportunities for skilled immigrants to study, work, live, and build companies in the United States is the closest thing to an economic free lunch the country will ever find. There is bipartisan agreement on skilled immigration. That part of Bidens plan would be an easy, prompt, and significant achievement for the new administration.

The Obama and Trump administrations presided over a lost decade for immigration reform. When we wrote The Immigrant Exodus in 2012, Washington was at a similar juncture as today. Facing an uncertain future over their status, highly skilled immigrants were already beginning to flee the United States. Then it got worse: Since 2013, when Congress failed to enact reform and entered a toxic period of bipartisan political conflict and immigrant-bashing (the latter mostly by Republicans), many thousands of start-up companies that could have been launched or grown in the United States were started elsewhere or have moved abroad. For the longest time, the United States had the highest concentration of unicornsstart-ups with a stock market capitalization of a billion dollars or morein the world. The last decade, however, has seen them established elsewhere. Today, China is the fastest-growing region for unicorns; India now has dozens of them as well. A Shanghai-based financial research firm found that China now has more unicorns than the United States. India expects to birth more than 50,000 start-ups by 2025, including 100 unicorns.

We have already demonstrated in our research that immigrants and their children go on to found many of the most successful companies, including Apple, Google, Tesla, WhatsApp, Instacart, and Slack. A 2018 study by Crunchbase found that the majority of U.S.-based unicorns were founded or headed by immigrants. Though the concentration of wealth and market power at these technology giants is associated with income disparity and even job displacement, successful tech companies do create disproportionate employment and wealth. The state of California managed to run a $15 billion government budget surplus during 2020a pandemic yearlargely through the capital gains and secondary economic effects associated with start-ups.

More difficult to tally, but at least as important, are the hundreds of thousands of immigrants in science fields who have opted to take their talents elsewhere. Along with them have gone future inventions and skills vital to U.S. competitiveness. A 2017 analysis calculated that foreign nationals comprised 81 percent of full-time graduate students in electrical engineering and 79 percent in computer science. In past decades, many such students stayed on to obtain permanent residency and start companies. We used to worry that they would promptly return home with their skills and training. But the truth is even worse: They no longer even come here to study. A November 2020 survey of 700 U.S. universities found international student enrollments to have fallen by a staggering 43 percent. China, India, many European countries, and Canada have all trained their sights on bringing in more international students in the STEM fieldsscience, technology, engineering, and mathematicsby offering the prize of a path to residency and even citizenship. They are also enticing their own nationals at U.S. universities to come home, which has become an increasingly easy sell given the unfriendly and uncertain environment for immigrants in the United States.

The STEM problem is exacerbated by the fact that many U.S. companies use H1-B visas to lock in STEM degree holders, many of whom then have to wait for decades for the U.S. government to approve their green cards.These visas tie the foreign workers to their jobs and allow the employer to pay them less than they could be earningwhich drives down pay for American workers as well. According to recent research by Michael Roach and John Skrentny, professors at Cornell University and the University of California, the H1-B guest worker visas were the primary route that the majority of international STEM doctorate recipients took to stay and work in the United States.

Bidens broad immigration-policy proposal would vastly improve on the status quo. His proposal would make it easier for H1-B holders to work at other companies and for their spouses to work legally in the United States. The law would extend the period for which STEM graduates can legally remain in the U.S. to find work or find companies. Their skills could go to work for the U.S. economy.

But there are a few things Biden could do better. Any reform should remove theper-country-of-origin limits on employment-based green cards and exempt dependents from the count toward such limits. The Biden plan doesnt include start-up visas with a path to citizenship. This is critical: Founders who either employ people in the United States or have raised funding for a start-up to that end should be able to remain and receive an expedited route to citizenship.

The problem with the all-or-nothing approach that the Democrats have repeatedly attempted is that it leaves no room for compromise or agreement on common pointswhich makes immigration reform a lose-lose proposition. The Republicans will likely be open to some form of legalization for undocumented residents and will surely support many parts of Bidens proposals on skilled immigration. For example, if Biden agreed to defer discussions on providing undocumented residents with citizenship in exchange for the ability to grant them 10-year visas, it could be palatable to the majority of Republicans. A start-up visa would also be a slam-dunk. Both parties might even agree on permanent residence for unauthorized immigrants who entered the United States as minors, sometimes referred to as Dreamersbased on the never-passed DREAM Act. But Congress will only reach agreement if these issues are unpacked instead of lumped together, like in past failed attempts at reform, in an all-or-nothing package.

As global demand for valuable talent intensifies, skilled immigrants are already turning away. The United States will never attract such talent back unless it entices them now. Britain recently made a blanket offer of citizenship to Hong Kong citizens, an ingenious move to attract the best of a skilled and highly educated workforce. China is aggressively courting both expatriates and ethnic Chinese who are foreign nationals to immigrate and start businesses. After four years of immigrant-bashing, the United States must send a strong signal to immigrant students, researchers, and founders that they are still welcome in this corner of the world. There is no better way to roll out the welcome mat than to make it easier for immigrants keen to study, work, and found companies to come where people have always come to pursue their dreams and make their mark: the United States.

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Biden's Immigration Plan Repeats the Battles of the Obama Years - Foreign Policy

Biden's most recent executive orders will focus on reforming the past administration's immigration policies

WASHINGTON (KLKN)- In his latest executive action, President Biden is tackling immigration reform for the nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

On his first day in office, Biden took steps to end the Muslim and Africa ban, halt construction on the Mexican-U.S. border wall, and protect Liberians living and working in the states. He also sent the United States Citizenship Act to Congress; this act seeks to modernize our immigration system and smartly manage our borders, while addressing the root causes of migration.

SEE ALSO:President Biden to sign healthcare executive actions

President Bidens strategy is centered on the basic premise that our country is safer, stronger, and more prosperous with a fair, safe and orderly immigration system that welcomes immigrants, keeps families together, and allows peopleboth newly arrived immigrants and people who have lived here for generationsto more fully contribute to our country, Bidens fact sheet about the executive actions said.

Bidens executive actions outlined:

Creating a task force to reunite families

President Biden believes that families belong together. He has made clear that reversing the Trump Administrationsimmigration policies that separatedthousands of families at the border is a top priority.

The key part of this action is reuniting thousands of families who were separated at the border, there will be a task force created to ensure this. The task force will work with stakeholders and representatives of the families to find parents and children who were separated by the Trump Administration.

A new strategy addressing irregular migration and create a humane asylum system

The Trump Administrations policies at the border have caused chaos, cruelty and confusion. Those policies have undermined the safety of ourcommunities, penalized asylum seekers fleeing violence,and destabilized security across the Western hemisphere. Today, the Biden Harris Administration will begin to roll back the most damaging policiesadopted by the prior administration, while taking effectiveaction to manage migration across the region.

The Biden Harris Administration will begin by addressing the underlying causes of migration. Then, theyll be a collaboration between U.S. partners, foreign governments, international organizations, and nonprofits to shore up other countries capacity to provide protection and opportunities to asylum seekers and migrants closer to home. And finally, they plan on ensuring that refugees from Central America and asylum seekers will have access to legal entrance into the United States.

Restore faith in the legal immigration system and promote the integration of new Americans

This executive order will give the White House more power to strategize immigration integration and inclusion.

The order requires agencies to conduct atop-to-bottom review of recent regulations, policies, and guidance that have set up barriersto our legal immigration system. It alsorescinds President Trumps memorandum requiring family sponsors to repay the government if relatives receive public benefits, instructsthe agenciesto reviewthe public charge rule and related policies, and streamline the naturalization process.

MORE: Bidens new executive actions to bring economic relief to Americans

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Biden to sign on immigration reform - KLKN

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The following statement was issued by Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American ImmigrationReform (FAIR), in response to yet another flurry of executive actions, triggering a review of how to increase legal and illegal immigration in the middle of a crisis with no end in sight.

Increasing Welfare State Through Potential Elimination of Public Charge:

"Protecting the interests of the American people by barring the admission of immigrants who are likely to become public charges those who are likely to become dependent on government welfare has been a cornerstone of U.S. immigration policy since 1882. As part of his 'America Last' immigration agenda, President Biden is gearing up to reverse existing policies that protect American taxpayers and doing so at a time when a raging pandemic is forcing many Americans to rely on social safety nets that can barely keep up with the demands being placed on them," charged Stein.

Family Reunification Task Force:

"Virtually all of the children who were separated from accompanying adults during the 2019 border surge have been reunited with their parents or legal guardians. The small number who remain separated are because the adults accompanying them were not their parents or guardians, or because their parents chose to leave them in the United States as unaccompanied minors rather than return to their home countries as a family unit. The situation of these children is tragic, but the fault lies with the adults who exploited or abandoned them, not with the policies of the United States," Stein said

"The administration's actions are an endorsement of the unbalanced and failed policy of mass family chain migration that dominates our legal immigration system and applies it to our policy of dealing with illegal immigration and human trafficking. Not only will people who immigrate here legally be entitled to reunite with family members they left behind, now illegal aliens will be able to do the same. We all support keeping families united, but there is nothing that says that reunification can only occur in this country," said Stein.

Supposedly Addressing the Root Causes of Migration:

"Today's declaration by the Biden administration that the answer to massive surges of people crossing our borders illegally is to 'address root causes of migration from Central America,' sets new standards for the high art of bureaucratic obfuscation and eloquently stated gibberish," declared Stein. "Hubris would be an inadequate description of the assertion that this country, which cannot address many of its own problems, is going to take on the task of solving Central America's, and perhaps the rest of the world's problems.

"In essence, Mr. Biden is saying that he has no intention of ever securing America's borders or preventing mass incursions of migrants, and that American taxpayers will continue to subsidize failing foreign economies and substandard living conditions through magnetic U.S. immigration policies.

"Additionally, while futilely attempting to address the root causes of migration in dozens of countries around the world, the Biden administration is ignoring, or exacerbating, the 'pull factors' over which it has full control. In the first weeks of his administration, President Biden has clearly signaled that sanctuary policies will be strengthened, access to public benefits will be increased, asylum fraud will be rewarded, and detentions and removals will all but cease."

More Asylum Seekers During a Global Pandemic:

"This executive order displays the same level of tone deafness seen in the previous immigration-related actions taken last week. Simply put, putting Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) on the chopping block in the middle of a pandemic is not in the national interest. American families have been put into lockdown for nearly a year now, hoping for a return to normalcy. It's also important to note that both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) are discouraging traveling during the pandemic. Those seeking admission as asylum seekers into the U.S. should be asked to remain in place until this health crisis, soon to claim 500,000 American lives, passes."

Contact: Matthew Tragesser, 202-328-7004 or [emailprotected]

ABOUT FAIR

Founded in 1979, FAIR is the country's largest immigration reform group. With over 3 million members and supporters nationwide, FAIR fights for immigration policies that serve national interests, not special interests. FAIR believes that immigration reform must enhance national security, improve the economy, protect jobs, preserve our environment, and establish a rule of law that is recognized and enforced.

SOURCE Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)

http://www.fairus.org

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Seemingly Oblivious to Global Pandemic and Over Ten Million Unemployed Americans, Biden Forges Ahead with an "America Last" Agenda on...