The question of immigration in the United States as the presidential election approaches is at the heart of the debates. President Joe Biden announced regularization measures on Tuesday that could benefit hundreds of thousands of people. “We can both secure the border with Mexico and provide legal channels for immigration,” explained the American president, candidate for a second term, in a speech at the White House.
The 81-year-old Democrat took the opportunity to criticize his predecessor, accusing him of fueling the “fears” of Americans and considering it “scandalous” to say, as the 78-year-old Republican billionaire did, that migrants were “animals” that “poison the blood” of the country.
Donald Trump, campaigning in Wisconsin in the north of the country, assured him that if he was elected in November, this “illegal amnesty project would be torn up and thrown away from day one”, while his supporters claimed, the intention of irregular migrants, “Let’s fire them!” Let’s fire them! “.
According to the Republican’s campaign team, which promises mass expulsions in the event of an electoral victory, the measures announced by Biden will “undoubtedly fuel migrant crime” or even “steal the social benefits of American seniors”.
The former president regularly refers to particularly shocking murders, committed by people who entered the United States illegally, to emphasize that there is a wave of crime due to illegal immigration. But neither the police statistics available in major American cities, nor the studies carried out by experts, show the reality of such a phenomenon. His campaign team cited the recent arrest of a national of El Salvador, accused of raping and killing a woman on a hiking trail in Maryland (east), in 2023. However, this suspect does not meet any of the criteria for be concerned by the measures announced this Tuesday by the White House.
Facilitate the issuance of green cards
Lagging behind in the polls, Joe Biden is seeking both to respond to accusations of laxity from the right and to remain faithful to his campaign promises of a more “humane” immigration system. If the president recently announced very restrictive measures against asylum seekers arriving at the southern border of the United States, he wants to facilitate the issuance of permanent residence permits, the famous “green card”, to the spouses of citizens Americans and their children. Thus, people residing for at least ten years in the United States, and married to an American citizen, will be able to initiate a regularization process without having to first leave American territory, as was until now the case.
“This measure will protect approximately half a million spouses of American citizens, and approximately 50,000 immigrant children under the age of 21,” according to the White House.
The large civil rights association ACLU “welcomed” Joe Biden’s decision in a statement, seeing in it “the kind of humane and common sense measures that make America stronger”. The same NGO had, on the contrary, decided to file a complaint against the measures taken by the Democratic president to limit entries at the border with Mexico.
In addition, Joe Biden wants to speed up the work visa procedure for certain immigrants who have obtained a higher education degree in the United States and have received a job offer in the country. This decision will apply in particular to beneficiaries of a program protecting immigrant minors, implemented in 2012 when Barack Obama was president.
