The Reality Behind Biden’s Plan to Legalize 11 Million Immigrants

Maria Elena Hernandez recently retrieved a flowery box tucked in her closet and dusted it off. For more than a decade, she has used it to store tax returns, lease agreements and other documents that she has collected to prove her family’s long years of residence in the United States.

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She had just learned of President Biden’s plan to offer a pathway to U.S. citizenship for nearly 11 million undocumented people, announced as part of a sweeping proposal to overhaul the nation’s immigration system.

The bill would allow undocumented immigrants who were in the United States before Jan. 1 to apply for temporary legal status after passing background checks and paying taxes. As newly minted “lawful prospective immigrants,” they would be authorized to work, join the military and travel without fear of deportation. After five years, they could apply for green cards.

The president’s proposal would be perhaps the most ambitious immigration redesign passed since 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which legalized three million people.

Converting more than three times that many people into full citizens could open the door to one of the most significant demographic shifts in modern U.S. history, lifting millions out of the shadows and potentially into higher-paying jobs, providing them with welfare benefits, health coverage and Social Security eligibility while eventually creating many new voters.

“This is the boldest immigration agenda any administration has put forward in generations,” said Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. “But given that the Democrats have razor-thin majorities in Congress, the administration needs to have its expectations tempered.” Legalizing just one group at first — say, farmworkers — might be “more realistic,” he said.

In a sign of the hurdles ahead, another one of Mr. Biden’s early immigration initiatives, a 100-day freeze on deportations, was temporarily blocked by a federal judge on Tuesday after a lawsuit by the Texas attorney general, who argued that his state faced enormous costs for services to undocumented immigrants who are not removed.

Immigration reform has stalled in Congress time and again, over border security, guest workers and whether to tackle legislation one piece at a time. But the big stumbling block remains whether providing amnesty to those who have broken the law will encourage more people to try their luck.

Even with beefed-up border enforcement and some employer sanctions, Mr. Reagan’s overhaul failed to curb the arrival of unauthorized immigrants.

Meanwhile, those immigrants have continued to live, work and raise families. More than 60 percent have resided in the country for more than a decade, and they have more than four million U.S.-born children. They account for 5 percent of the work force, representing the backbone of the agriculture, construction and hospitality sectors.

About four in 10 did not enter the United States through the southwestern border. Rather they are visa overstays — tourists, students or temporary skilled workers who never left.

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The largest share of unauthorized immigrants is from Mexico. Having survived treacherous river and desert crossings to reach the United States, they found a nation willing to look past laws that prohibit hiring them, to employ them in fields and factories, and in homes as nannies and housekeepers.

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Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both championed comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to legalization for undocumented people. But the immigration packages that were debated in Congress — in 2006, 2007 and 2013 — all stalled.

Among the concerns raised by opponents are that new citizens will vote as a solid Democratic bloc, displace American workers and become a burden on public services. Some predict that any legalization program would encourage more people to make the trek north.

“Legalizing countless millions of illegal aliens — even discussing it — rings the bell for millions more to illegally enter the U.S. to await their green card,” said Lora Ries, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

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Among the biggest backers of the Biden initiative are employers who rely on immigrants. Through the years, dairies, packing plants and other worksites have been caught up in immigration raids targeting unauthorized workers.

The Reagan-era amnesty in 1986 caused only a temporary drop in the number of undocumented immigrants because it was not accompanied by a robust system for legally bringing in low-skilled workers. Employers faced fines for knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants but were not responsible for vetting documents presented by job applicants, spawning a huge industry of fake Social Security numbers.

“The principle is simple: If you carry out a broad legalization, it doesn’t freeze undocumented migration flows as long as labor demand persists,” said Wayne Cornelius, director emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

The illegal influx began to swell again in the early 1990s.

Economic imperatives prevailed, driving illegal immigration up year after year. {snip}

From 1986 to 2008 the country’s undocumented population swelled to 12 million from three million despite an exponential increase in funding for border security, including boots on the ground. The militarization did not reduce illegal entries. Instead, it turned a seasonal migration of mainly men who returned home each year to Mexico into a settled population of families.

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