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The Biden administration will unveil its immigration reform legislation in Congress sometime this week, multiple people familiar with the matter tell The Post.
President Biden’s “US Citizenship Act of 2021” will be introduced in either the House or Senate before the end of the week, sources confirm, though exact details on the unveiling are still being finalized.
One source familiar with the planning said it will likely happen on Thursday, but stressed that those involved were still “in the planning process.”
The effort to push the legislation through both houses of Congress is being led by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.).
The legislation itself will mirror some of the executive actions the 46th commander-in-chief signed in his first weeks in office.
Executive orders are legally binding, and as a result, are published in the Federal Register. Executive actions, by contrast, are more often symbolic efforts to enact change.
Biden signed a record number of both during that time period, some of which included edicts on immigration.
One of his actions called on Congress to grant permanent status to “Dreamers” as part of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which former President Donald Trump challenged in court.
His legislative proposal, as a result, will include an earned pathway to citizenship for over half a million Dreamers.
It will also provide a five-year path to legal status, or a green card, for individuals who pass background checks, pay taxes and fulfill other requirements.
Those who complete that five-year process then would begin a three-year path to citizenship.
There are currently over 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States.
White House officials, as well as Biden himself, have continued to maintain that now is “not the time to come” to the US.
Migrants, however, do not appear to be getting the message.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador noted last week that migrants believed the borders were open under Biden, something White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about.
Psaki stated that the “vast majority” of migrants at the southern border were turned away, adding that it is “not the time to come,” but eventually, migrants will be processed in a “moral and a humane” way.
“We continue to convey that this is not the time to come [to the United States],” Psaki said at a briefing Thursday. “The president is committed to putting in place, in partnership with our Department of Homeland Security, a moral and a humane process for processing people at the border, but that capacity is limited right now and it means we’re just not equipped to process people at the pace that we would like to.”
Biden’s immigration plan does appear to take some action to dissuade migrants, implementing a rule that would exclude migrants who arrived after Jan. 1 of this year.
It will also invest in technology and infrastructure on the border to handle the migrant surge.
The White House declined to comment to The Post on the incoming legislation.
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