Donald Trump’s presidency began with rants against Mexicans and a barrage of executive orders curtailing immigration to the United States. It ended on Wednesday with his successor immediately launching a new and comprehensive effort to overhaul the United States’ antiquated, dysfunctional, and often cruel immigration system. That President Joe Biden would put such controversial legislation at the top of a large pile of urgent proposals on the day of his inauguration is the strongest possible signal of how much a successful immigration overhaul means to his presidency—and to the country. While Biden should work hard with Republicans to find a workable compromise, he must be ready to use every tool he has—including ending the Senate filibuster—to succeed this time around.
Biden’s new proposals, unveiled Wednesday, are mostly familiar from the last two times Congress unsuccessfully tried to reform immigration laws. They include a path to citizenship for most of the roughly 11 million immigrants who have lived in the United States without authorization for many years, more green cards awarding permanent residency to skilled workers and their families, an expansion of refugee and asylum admissions, and greater foreign aid to Central American countries to reduce the number of people leaving them. All this would mark a sharp turnaround from the Trump administration, which shut the southern border to asylum-seekers and migrants from Central America and sharply reduced legal immigration to the United States.
