President Joe Biden announced last September that his administration would extend work permits to nearly half a million Venezuelans, many of whom are immigrants who have just crossed the border illegally.
And what about that father or mother of two American children who have been living in the United States since the 1980s, working and paying taxes?
Faced with a large influx of immigrants crossing the border illegally, Biden used executive power to allow several hundred thousand of them to live and work temporarily in the United States, in an effort to make them less dependent on local governments and other forms of assistance.
Now, groups representing undocumented immigrants and their American citizen children – as well as their employers – are appealing to the president to use the same broad power to open channels for the more than eight million immigrants living in the United States without legal status to also be somehow benefited.
“If President Biden can grant work permits to newcomers, he can do the same for the people who have been tending our crops, emptying bedpans, and cleaning hotel rooms for over 10 years,” said Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition, to The New York Times.
Business leaders have been pressing Republicans and Democrats in Congress for decades to reform the country’s immigration system and meet labor needs. But the appeals have gone nowhere in an increasingly polarized Congress.
A business coalition, in a letter to the president signed by over 300 employers and trade associations, called for “immediate action” to extend work authorization to undocumented individuals who have been in the country for many years.
About three-quarters of the 10.5 million undocumented people in the United States in 2021 were active in the labor market, according to the Pew Research Center. About two million people from the total undocumented population have temporary legal status that makes them eligible to work.
However, similar to what happened with DACA – implemented by former President Barack Obama – a comprehensive action by the president to allow more people to work legally could provoke legal challenges and political attacks from critics.
The increase in migration to the United States has not left Biden with easy options. The perception that he is favoring newcomers at the expense of long-term undocumented immigrants could hurt him among Latino voters, especially a Democratic bloc that has begun to fragment, with an increasing number of people supporting Republican candidates.
But the billions of dollars that undocumented immigrants contribute to public coffers increase the feeling that Biden’s recent efforts on behalf of newcomers are unfair. According to an analysis of 2021 census data from the American Immigration Council, undocumented workers paid $31 billion in federal, state, and local taxes, including Social Security, from which they cannot withdraw any benefits.
Source: The New York Times