White House officials announced that a bill to President Joe Biden will be unveiled today, Thursday, to allow the naturalization of millions of immigrants, whose status is illegal, as part of his reforms of former President Donald Trump's immigration policies.
"It has been a commitment from the president from day one, and it (represents) his vision of what it takes to reform the system," a Biden administration official said.
Representative Linda Sanchez and Senator Bob Menendez - both Democrats - will present the bill to the Senate and the House of Representatives, which opens the door to obtaining citizenship for about 11 million people in an illegal situation, if they prove their presence in the United States at the beginning of this year.
And it will benefit from this law - if passed - the so-called "dreamers", who are about 700 thousand young people who entered the United States illegally during their childhood and are still on its soil.
The current Interior Minister, Alejandro Mayuras, had put in place a special program to protect "dreamers" from deportation while he was deputy interior minister under Barack Obama, but Trump canceled the program as of 2017, which raised the fear of these young people about deportation.
Permanent residency will be available to people with temporary protection status, a measure that prevents citizens of countries experiencing natural disasters or conflicts from being deported, as well as workers in the agricultural sector who can prove that they are employed in the United States.
Immediately after Biden was inaugurated as President of the United States on January 20, he signed a series of executive orders that would nullify Trump's previous orders, chief among them the first decree issued by Trump to ban the entry of citizens of 5 Muslim-majority countries, namely Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
Biden considered that he does not issue new laws, but rather fixes the "bad policies" of the previous administration, as he put it.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the new immigration measure.
Biden will, starting this week, end the immigration policy set by his predecessor in 2019, under which he will return asylum seekers to the United States via Mexico to Mexico, and they are forced to stay there while their files are examined.
This policy affected 70,000 asylum seekers - at least - from Central America, which generated a humanitarian crisis that was criticized by human rights organizations.