It would have a big effect in Texas, for obvious reasons.
Just after being sworn in on Wednesday, President-elect Joe Biden plans to propose a major immigration overhaul that would offer a pathway to citizenship to up to 1.7 million Texans who are in the country without legal authorization.
The proposal, which Biden is expected to send to Congress on his inauguration day, would create an eight-year path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., more than 500,000 of whom live in Harris and Bexar counties, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Those who qualify would be granted a green card after five years and could apply for citizenship three years later.
The plan would create a faster track for those protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — more than 106,000 Texans as of June — and with temporary protected status, who could apply immediately for a green card. A Biden transition official on Tuesday confirmed the outline of the plan, which was first reported by the Washington Post.
The move positions immigration reform as a top priority for the new president, beyond tackling the coronavirus, for which Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion relief package. Democrats’ slim control of Congress, meanwhile, puts a spotlight on Texas Republicans, especially U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, who campaigned last year on his support for the DACA program.
Democrats control the House, where a majority could pass Biden’s proposal, but they will need to build support from at least 10 Republican senators for it to get to Biden’s desk.
Immigration advocates have cheered the proposal and some experts say they’re more optimistic than they’ve been in years about the prospects of such a comprehensive overhaul.
Still, a deal on immigration has eluded Congress for decades and Biden’s proposal was already drawing resistance from the Senate’s most conservative members on Tuesday. U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri stopped an effort to fast-track Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, citing the president-elect’s “amnesty plan for 11 million immigrants.”
Cornyn, meanwhile, said as recently as this summer that he had given up on comprehensive reform, calling at the time for incremental action on issues such as DACA.
“In the entire time I’ve been in the Senate, when we try to do comprehensive immigration reform, we fail,” Cornyn said in June. “We have a perfect record of failure when it comes to comprehensive immigration reform.”
Well, you can be part of the solution this time if you want to, John. We know your junior colleague will do everything he can to block this, so the choice is yours.
There are things that President Biden can do with executive orders, but as we know from previous litigation, that can be precarious. Getting the legislation through has to be the goal, especially since this time it’s all about providing relief and not further increasing the militarization of the border. Dems missed their chance on this in the first years of the Obama presidency. Lord only knows when the stars will align like this again. Get it done. Mother Jones and Daily Kos have more.
This will be fantastic for low wage Texas workers, as they have even more and more competition for fewer and fewer jobs, as the attacks on the oil and gas industry ramp up. The trickle down effect of attacking O&G will be less spending at restaurants, and other businesses that employ low skill workers, so there will be fewer of those jobs available, but a much larger applicant pool for those same few remaining jobs. Add in the virus lockdowns and restrictions, and I can’t see how this coordinated policy can do anything but win bigly, for the workers of Texas.
This will pit American citizens against a flood of formerly illegal alien folks, for the same scraps. Surely that won’t result in violence.
After all, everyone remembers the brutal warfare that we experienced after Reagan’s amnesty.
I, for one, am completely done with the vague threats from racist wormbrains like Bill here. Put up or shut up, Bill. Live out your Turner Diaries dreams and face the consequences, or just admit that you’re not up to living in a truly egalitarian, pluralistic society.
Robbie,
Stop lying about what I’ve stated. What I’m talking about, we’ve already seen in Watts and other Los Angeles neighborhoods, in Chicago, and other cities, as there is conflict between blacks and the newer arriving Hispanics who are out there competing for the same work. When Reagan was running things, there was an economic expansion, people were able to get jobs, to get better jobs, to work their way up the economic ladder. Times were good under Reagan. Compare and contrast with the plan now, which is to keep people OUT of work using the virus panic, the attack on major industries like O&G, coupled with the inflation that’s going to cause. Higher energy prices raise the price of EVERYTHING, Robbie, reducing purchasing power. And who does that hit hardest? Working people, Robbie. It hits working people, who will now have to compete harder for the same low wage jobs, and who will have difficulty trying to parley their skills into higher wage jobs, because those higher wage jobs, like those offered by the KeystoneXL, aren’t available anymore.
This is a recipe for disaster, but you keep on looking for those wipipo boogiemen under every bed Robbie. You’ve seen a full year of street violence from the left, and I predict sinking the economy, which is what Biden’s plans will do, will foment MORE violence from the left.
And you have no defense to any of that, you have no argument that creating a bad economy and reducing purchasing power by making energy more expensive, or making US energy more expensive so that we can’t be competitive in manufacturing, helps America or the American worker, so you just toss out bullshit about “Turner Diaries” and ebil, ebil, wipipo. Pathetic.
In reality, American citizens are currently competing with people who won’t challenge their working conditions or next to nothing pay for fear of being deported. Taking away that fear will likely put upward pressure on wages for everyone down at the bottom.
And before anyone starts whining “it’ll be too expensive to pay burger flippers,” when I was in high school many years ago the minimum wage was something you could live on, a bit less than $15/hour in today’s money. Not only did we have plenty of fast food places, pretty much every grocery store paid someone to take your groceries out to your car, no matter how far out in the parking lot it was (and they would often be tipped, too).
American manufacturing jobs move to Mexico while,
Immigrants move to America to
buy produce and manufactured goods from Mexico…..
What?
Dang Bill, you come with new BS with every argument, since when was the cost of energy taken into consideration when building new labor intensive plants?
You can’t have it both ways Bill. High energy prices good for fossil fuel companies, bad for people like me with gas guzzling pickups and the public in general. So are you for the fossil fuel companies or people with vehicles that suck fuel?
Apple moved to China cause the price of electricity was lower there according to your argument.
Biden had time to develop a good plan…he didn’t. He and VP Harris should be honest
Who pays Bill Daniels, to come up with the BS? Follow the money
What company has a big hand in pushing Keystone?
A few weeks ago, the formerly close-to-the-vest Koch brothers openly put out the word that they’ll be putting up close to $1 billion to influence the upcoming 2016 US presidential election. Whether or not they succeed is not the point. Forget about 2016 — the point is that the promise of a torrent of campaign cash will keep the Koch’s favored lawmakers pushing hard for the Keystone XL pipeline right now, in 2015.
To be clear, the Keystone XL pipeline is not a Koch brothers project. But like the saying goes, follow the money…
Keystone XL would carry oil from Canada down to Gulf Coast refineries for export, so despite assertions by supporters it would not benefit US consumers. For that matter, the US is already pockmarked with pipelines and this new one would only create about three dozen permanent jobs.
…
As noted above, Koch Industries is very clear about its connection to Keystone XL:
Koch Industries has no financial stake in the Keystone pipeline and we are not party to its design or construction. We are not a proposed shipper or customer of oil delivered by this pipeline. We have taken no position on the legislative proposal at issue before Congress and we are not cited in any way in that legislation.
Fine. However, as reported last year by The Washington Post, the Koch brothers do have a large stake in Canadian tar sands, which provides a simple explanation for their interest in Keystone XL, as reflected in their overall lobbying activities and campaign donations.
…
for more on who may be paying Bill Daniels to push his lies
https://cleantechnica.com/2015/02/10/transportation-game-keystone-xl-pipeline-koch-brothers-cant-let-go/
The excerpt doesn’t mention a key part of the proposed legislation, the part that attempts to address the root causes of migration from Central America.
LOL, Manny! The surviving Koch bro is an open borders enthusiast. If you’ll recall, the brothers, when both were still alive, didn’t support Trump. Trump, if nothing else, really showed all of us what the uniparty is all about.
Want to talk about energy and US jobs? Look no further than the aluminum smelting mills. When natural gas was at $ 15, they just shut down the smelters. They couldn’t even break even, and it was cheaper to shut them down and pay all the sunk costs, the property taxes, unemployment claims, continuing maintenance costs to mothball the plants, etc. than to keep them running at a loss. It was cheaper to just put everyone out of work. That’s an example of what high energy prices cause, Manny. Then there’s the cost of endless Middle East wars to ensure we have access to foreign oil. You’ve got to figure in that cost, too, Manny. Producing our own energy negates our need to fight wars to protect oil producing countries that often times don’t even like us.
And right now people are out of work because of the virus scare, and resultant government lock downs and edicts. If you cared at all about people, you’d want to see them get back to work, but that’s not what Lunch Bucket Joe is doing, now, is it? He’s actively going out of his way to put more people out of work. Those equipment operators, welders, inspectors, etc. that just got thrown out of a job don’t have green energy jobs to walk into right now, today. All they have to walk into is the unemployment line, along with all the rest.
And then he’s going out of his way to flood the country with new people who will compete for the few jobs available out there.
@ Jen,
If I’m understanding your position, you feel that the citizens of the US now, today, deserve collective punishment for the US government’s actions in Central America in the past, in a case of, we deserve what we’re gonna get.
American citizen workers today deserve to face unrelenting competition from a flood of non citizen workers, to atone for things in the past. Is that about right?
What collective punishment are YOU suffering for our government’s past actions in Central America? Are you going to hand over your car and house to a deserving Central American to atone for your part of the collective punishment? Are you willing to give up your job right now, today, to atone, and to accept your part of the collective punishment?
WHAT are you smokin Bill ? If it is supposta be crack it aint crack….
Bill enron killed the aluminum companies and Kock Industries had their own electricity trading shenanigans going.
Bill they didn’t close to go anywhere else, they could not succeed against the Chinese dumping. A government that subsidized them could.have saved them or if only we had kept energy regulation in place.
How much does Kock industries pay you?
The correct surname spelling is Koch, not Kock (not to mention Cock), Manny. (Lobo appreciates any corrections in return.) It means cook in German, for what it’s worth. In analogy to JFK’s legendary misrepresentation of his migration status in Berlin: “Ich bin ein Koch” (kein Berliner).
CRACKING, NOT FRACKING, AND HIGH-OCTANE FUEL FOR THE LUFTWAFFE
Papa Fred Koch was an interesting German/Dutch-American indeed. Did business both with Uncle Joe’s USSR (which conveniently did not respect US patents) and Hitler’s Third Reich: Oil refining business.
And for the local nexus, Fred attended Rice, then still an Institute, while WWI was raging back in the Old Country.
Jen,
Why don’t you explain what your point is then? Americans are out of work because the various levels of government have forced businesses to close, and reduce the number of customers to the point that lots of small businesses, and lots of jobs, are kaput, done, gone. Now we’ve got Biden writing EO’s to put even MORE people out of work right now, and to “necessarily make the price of energy skyrocket,” as Obama promised.
There are no jobs available for the old jobless, and now, the NEW jobless, in America to get, and higher energy prices will just make that even worse. Tell us, why we need to be concerned with Central America right this minute, when our own people are jobless?
Why is it that Central Americans > US citizen Americans?
What is your point, Jen?
Never fear, our illustrious leader will save us:
https://nationalfile.com/hot-mic-biden-says-i-dont-know-what-im-signing-signs-executive-order-anyway/
Biden: “I don’t know what I’m signing.”
aide: “sign it anyway.”
This is gonna be great! I can’t wait to see what else will happen! I bet Joe can’t wait to find out what will happen, either!
[Joe signs E.O. he clearly doesn’t understand]
Lobo, my intent was to spell what I think they are. I have read extensively on what they have engaged in. Like Trump they inherited wealth, they did do a lot to increase the wealth including short-changing Native Americans, being part of the rigging of energy prices although not to the extent that Enron did.
If you notice the spelling is correct in a prior comment.
Bill you need to quit going to those aluminum wraps on head websites.
National File an extreme right Tin-Foil Hat Conspiracy website based on the promotion of unproven/debunked claims and a Strong Pseudoscience purveyor based on using junk science to support claims.
Manny,
Simple question….is the video faked? I clearly hear him saying what I quoted. Are you saying that’s a fake? We shouldn’t believe our lyin’ eyes and ears?
Can you prove that it has not been altered by the Fascist/Racist/Republican member(s)?
Whether or not the video was faked, the most reasonable explanation is that Joe looked with his eyes and read the thing that says what the thing is then signed.
I don’t think presidents generally read the entire thing when they do these signings. I do think that this is something Joe had read before and most likely worked on in some form himself. He knew what he was signing when he signed.
I do understand why trump supporters would be confused by a person being able to read and comprehend in a very short period of time.
I did watch the video this one time, and as Manny said, it’s a rwnj conspiracy site. I won’t be reading/watching stuff from this site any more. The same article also contains a debunked item about Joe saying “salute marines” when he actually said “good looking marines”.