Consider This from NPR - How President Biden's Immigration Plan Would Undo Trump's Signature Policies

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

President Biden followed through on a day-one promise to send a massive immigration reform bill to Congress. Now the hard part: passing that bill into law. Muzaffar Chishti of New York University's Migration Policy Institute explains the president's plans — and the signal they send to other countries around the world. Biden is also pursuing big changes in how the U.S. admits refugees. Corine Dehabey, an Ohio-based director of the refugee settlement organization Us Together, says families who've been separated for years are looking forward to reuniting.Follow more of NPR's immigration coverage from Southwest correspondent John Burnett. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

For more than four years, Hilda Ramirez has been living in a Presbyterian church in Austin, Texas. She's an asylum seeker from Guatemala, and she's been afraid that if she leaves that church, ICE agents would sweep her up and deport her back to Central America. Her 14-year-old son, Ivan, has lived a third of his life in that one suburban church. On Wednesday, she watched the presidential inauguration ceremony with tears in her eyes. Under a massive new immigration plan from President Biden, Hilda could get a green card and a work permit. Hilda, who watched the ceremony with NPR reporter John Burnett, said she's full of hope. She's been praying that God send a good U.S. president who would treat immigrants justly. She wants to walk beyond the church property.

And Ivan wants to live like a normal teenager. Consider this. President Biden has long promised to deliver a massive immigration reform bill to Congress on his first day in office. On Wednesday, he did that. And immigration reform advocates are celebrating. But making Biden's bill law may be one of his biggest challenges. From NPR, I'm Adi Cornish. It's Thursday, January 21st. This message comes from NPR sponsor Comcast. Since 2011, Comcast has connected more than 4 million students from low-income families to the internet. Now, they're launching more than 1,000 Wi-Fi-connected lift zones across the country. More at Comcast.com slash education. President Biden campaigned on uniting the country.

He now takes office just weeks after a pro-Trump insurrection. The NPR Politics Podcast is there every day to break down the transition of power as Biden takes the reins in Washington. It's Consider This from NPR. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. Great honor to be here. If there was any doubt that Donald Trump wanted immigration to be remembered as one of his

administration's signature issues, he literally signed his name to a section of the border wall a week ago. DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States of America, We've worked long and hard to get this done. They said it couldn't be done, and we got it done. It was one of his last trips as president, a ceremony in the Rio Grande Valley to mark the completion of 450 miles of border wall. Just for context, the entire U.S.-Mexico border is almost 2,000 miles. Aside from signing a plaque on the wall, the outgoing president had a warning, which he

delivered to an audience of uniformed border patrol agents. In particular, if our border security measures are reversed, it will trigger a tidal wave of illegal immigration, a wave like you've never seen before. And I can tell you that already. Trump's effort to define his immigration legacy was littered with false statements. He said no administration had built border walls before him. President George W. Bush definitely did. Trump said his policy of forcing

asylum seekers to wait in Mexico ended a humanitarian crisis. It, in fact, caused one. And while Texas border towns went for Biden in the election, Trump tried to claim that he had won them. Basically, he only performed better than past Republican candidates. So we had a very busy and active day today, as you all know. A week after Trump's visit to the border, there was a new president in the White House, and a new press secretary, Jen Psaki,

announced that President Biden had sent a massive immigration reform bill to Congress. It's called the U.S. Citizenship Act. The president's priority reflected in the bill are to responsibly manage the border, keep families together, grow our economy, address the root causes of migration from Central America, and ensure that America can remain a refuge

for those fleeing prosecution. With that, I'd love to take your questions. President Biden's immigration plan goes big. It would try to create a pathway to citizenship for more than 10 million unauthorized immigrants. And it's a long pathway, eight years, with background checks, tax payment requirements, and at the end, a citizenship test. And for that to happen, Biden needs Congress to make the bill law. But for other aspects of immigration policy, he doesn't. And I thought with the state of the nation today, there's no time to waste, get to work immediately. On Biden's first evening of work in the Oval Office, he signed a bunch of executive orders, including a handful dealing with immigration policy. One of them

was an order to rescind former President Trump's ban barring travel from some majority Muslim countries. Another ends the emergency declaration Trump used to divert defense money for the border wall and hits pause on construction. And in order to safeguard the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, that's known as DACA, that program protects unauthorized immigrants brought to this country as children from deportation. People like Greisa Martinez-Rosas. This is the most progressive legalization bill in history.

Martinez-Rosas is an undocumented dreamer, a DACA recipient, and head of the youth immigrant group United We Dream. She told NPR's John Burnett that the president's immigration bill is what they've been waiting for. We made it. We made this day happen. And we are resolute in our commitment to bring peace, stability,

and joy to our people as we turn a new chapter in our country. Biden's plan is the kind of massive reform effort that immigration advocates have been wanting for years. It's also the kind of effort that has failed repeatedly in Congress under in its policy content, was going to be a very different chapter in this administration than in the past. I spoke to Muzaffar Shishti with the Nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. He said that Biden's executive actions yesterday could have an immediate effect on immigration enforcement. In the very beginning of the Trump administration, he issued a very aggressive executive order, which essentially made everyone in this country who's deportable a target for enforcement. So that meant that even if you're just an ordinary status violator, if you're a nanny or a landscaper with no criminal record, you could be picked up for deportation.

You could leave in the morning and never come home at night. That era of immigration enforcement, this administration wants to end. It wants to clearly take a position that only high-risk immigrants, which are national security threats, should be the priorities for enforcement. While we're on this issue, the example of President Trump's policy of separating parents and children at the U.S. border, the fact that as of late last year, parents of over 500 migrant children could not be located. This is a result of an enforcement policy. What can the Biden administration do about that? There's no way to undo that, so to speak.

Exactly. This is one more of these un-nuanced enforcement policies at the border. And it led to tragic separation of families, which became a very emotional issue. So a number of these execs were actually responding to some of those emotive issues of the last four years. So this administration cannot quickly reunite families because we don't know many of them are. So what it intends to do is establish a task force among various agencies of the government and law enforcement to make sure that we can reunite these families as quickly as we can. As we mentioned earlier, the immigration bill that President Biden is proposing carves out a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

What is that path starting to look like? Now, that's a really bold initiative. The issue with this is that there are just too many other priorities, both administratively, legislatively, which may make that hard. So I think maybe more likely is that small subsets of the population may be picked for either a pathway to citizenship or at least protection from deportation in the short run. It sounds like what you're saying is it's just going to be baby steps still. And what does that mean for people who see the last couple of years as being just incredibly difficult and almost antithetical to how America sees itself in terms of being welcoming in some ways? Well, the tone is really important here. The tone that the prior administration had set was really punitive and restrictionist towards immigration. This administration is

starting on a totally different tone. That's really important for presidential leadership. To set a new tone is that, look, immigration is not a threat. Immigration, either in economic or in national security, it really is an asset and an important American value. Just to send the signal on day one, I think makes a lot of difference. Musa Farshishti, Senior Fellow with the Migration Policy Institute. Four years ago, during his first week in office, President Trump created chaos around the world when he declared an immediate ban on immigration

from seven majority Muslim countries. The families, they were kind of confused. They don't know what's happening. They don't know if they have to go back themselves, what's going to happen with their families. At the time, Corrine DeHabe spoke to NPR about the confusion that the travel ban caused. She worked for an Ohio-based organization called Us Together. They helped refugees resettle in America.

And back then, she didn't know if her organization would even continue to operate. We're expecting two families today, and their flights were canceled. We were trying to get the furniture from the church, gathering donations for them, mattresses. We had to cancel everything today. That was in 2017. The next year, the Supreme Court upheld the Trump travel ban, and a slimmed-down version of it remained in place until Wednesday, when President Biden revoked it with an executive order.

NPR's Ari Shapiro spoke with Kareem Dahaby four years ago, and he followed up with her again this week. Before you tell us your reaction to Biden's policies, can you give us a snapshot of what the last four years have been like for you? I mean, President Trump lowered the cap on refugees every year from more than 100,000 to a record low of 15,000. What did that mean for your organization? Well, it was really slow. In the past four years, we had quite a few program cuts. And honestly, we struggled, but we pulled it through. And it was a little bit of agony to keep the programs live and up and running. So tell us how you are feeling today, now that Biden has undone Trump's travel ban and promised to raise the Kaban refugees to 125,000 or higher. Yes, we're feeling, all of us at the organization,

hopeful. So this is an excited. So we're hoping we're going to serve people again. What are your clients, the Syrian refugee families you work with in Toledo, telling you about this moment? Well, actually, they are happy, I'm sure. And especially now because there was a delay a little bit in the past years, and now they have hope to receive their families here. They've been waiting. Can you tell us about the questions that your clients are asking you now about what this new future will look like?

Oh, the questions, of course, they call us, oh, there are somebody overseas at the asylum country, running interview that are coming, they are traveling, how come we're not having people here? And I said, guys, wait a minute. They're like, ready for people to start coming in now. Yeah. Biden's been in office 24 hours. Why isn't my brother here yet? And I was so busy yesterday. Honestly, I didn't see what he said about the travel ban, but evidently other people did and they were calling me like, you know, and I said, well, if you said it today and revoked it today, it's not going to happen today, the travel guys, you know? But that's what's been happening. Can you tell us about a particular client, a specific story, someone who's really eager to see this new chapter begin? Honestly, we have a family. I think you've met when you were here. His daughter, his son are overseas, and they are very hopeful they're going to meet him again.

This is an adult daughter and son? Yes. How long has it been since they've seen each other? Close to five years now. When we first met, you talked about what America stands for, openness, people coming together to help regardless of religion. Did the last four years change your view of what America represents? My view never changes. My view is humanity existed way before religion was formed,

and God put us on earth to lean on each other and to help each other. And that's what the United States is all about. Kareem Dahaby, director at Us Together in Toledo, Ohio. You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.