US President Joe Biden's administration, associated with Democratic lawmakers, formally rolled out a significant immigration Bill called US Citizenship Act of 2021. The law introduces legislation that would expand immigration and give nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants a path to US citizenship in eight years. The bill includes providing a shorter process to legal status for young people brought to the US by their parents as children, known as Dreamers.
White House officials called the Bill a chance to "reset and restart conversations on immigration reform," labeling the bill as Biden's "vision of what it takes to fix the system", the Xinhua news agency reported.
The bill also triples the number of visas available to those who have been the victim of certain crimes including domestic violence, upping the number from 10,000 to 30,000. Employment-based visas also jump under the Bill from 140,000 to 170,000.
Under the bill, undocumented people living in the United States would be able to seek green cards after five years, while the three- and 10-year bars that restrict people from reentering the US if they've overstayed their visas will be lifted.
It would allow immigrant farmworkers and those with Temporary Protected Status, who came to the United States as far back as the 1990s amid natural disasters and other unrest in their countries of origin, to quickly gain green cards, said a report.
The Bill will make efforts to ease immigration timelines abroad, increasing numerous types of visa caps while seeking to reduce wait times for those who may currently wait as long as 20 years to join the family in the country. It also includes an enforcement plan to deploy technology to patrol the US border.
The Bill also lays out a plan to create refugee processing in Central America to discourage migrants from trying to travel to the US-Mexico border, while setting aside USD 4 billion in aid for Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to address the root causes of migration.
Biden praises successful Mars landing of NASA's Perseverance rover
Biden reverses Donald Trump's designation of Houthis as terrorists
Justice Department demands resignation of attorneys of Trump administration