President Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill formally introduced his immigration overhaul in the House on Thursday morning, making good on his campaign promise to seek to modernize the nation’s immigration system and provide a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented Americans.
“We’re here today because last November 80 million Americans voted against Donald Trump and against everything he stood for,” Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said at a virtual news conference. “They voted to restore common sense, compassion, and competence in our government. And part of that mandate is fixing our immigration system, which is a cornerstone of Trump’s hateful horror show.”
The unveiling puts a spotlight on a high-profile and thorny political issue that Mr. Biden is hoping to address, despite the steep political challenges associated with moving immigration legislation in Congress.
It comes at a time when the president and Democratic lawmakers are already in the midst of another major legislative undertaking: passing another coronavirus relief package. A planned trip by Mr. Biden to visit a Pfizer vaccine manufacturing facility in Michigan on Thursday was postponed until Friday because of a winter storm in the Washington area.
Though Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief plan is all but certain to command attention on Capitol Hill in the near term, the introduction of the immigration overhaul provides a reminder that a number of daunting issues unrelated to the pandemic lie ahead as well.
Mr. Menendez and Representative Linda T. Sánchez, Democrat of California, unveiled the immigration legislation, which will be called the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 and is based on a proposal Mr. Biden announced on his first day in office. The two lawmakers were joined by 10 of their colleagues for the announcement.
The centerpiece of the legislation is an eight-year path to citizenship for most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States…
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