WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers including California Sen. Alex Padilla are urging President Biden to act now to protect immigrants with temporary legal status and work authorization.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to quickly take action against immigrants once he takes office, including deporting more people.
Lawmakers said during a news conference Wednesday that protecting hundreds of thousands of immigrants was not only a moral imperative, but an economic imperative.
“By taking away the work authorization of hundreds of thousands of workers, we are destroying our workforce,” Padilla said. “To all the voters who came out in November, who told the campaigners and voters that the main thing for them is the high cost of living, the cost of housing, the price of food and much more: Let's make it clear that mass deportations directly result in economic disaster and high prices.”
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada said White House officials told her they were considering the request, but did not give a time frame. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He and Padilla, and Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, sent a letter to Biden last week asking him to re-nominate eligible countries, including Nicaragua, El Salvador and Venezuela, for Temporary Protected Status, and to nominate Ecuador for protection.
They also urged Biden to speed up the processing of applications for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that provides work permits and protection from deportation to some immigrants brought to the US as children.
California is home to approximately 68,000 Protected Temporary Status holders and 150,000 DACA recipients.
Temporary Protected Status is a presidential mandate that allows people to live and work in the US when conditions in their home country, such as war or a natural disaster, make it unsafe to return. More than 860,000 immigrants from 17 countries are protected under the program, which the Biden administration has greatly expanded.
The protection of this system is provided for a period of up to 18 months. Foreign protection will soon end; the names of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Nepal and Sudan, for example, expire in March. Renewing them now will buy those immigrants more time to work legally and seek other legal options.
During his first term, Trump revoked protections for people from several countries, but the class action lawsuit kept them protected until the Biden administration took office and reversed Trump's move.
It is widely expected that Trump will try to withdraw the protections or let them expire soon after being sworn in.
The request by lawmakers and advocates comes after Trump said on NBC's “Meet the Press” that the only way to prevent families from being separated is to deport them all, including children who are U.S. citizens. Trump also said he would “work with Democrats on a plan” to help DACA recipients stay in the country.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Tuesday titled, “How mass deportations will tear apart American families, hurt our armed forces, and destroy our economy.”
In a floor speech previewing the impeachment hearing the day before, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said there was reason to be skeptical, if not skeptical, of Trump's promises to work with Democrats.
“[In his] In the past term, President-elect Trump has pulled out of four different deals with Democrats to resolve the DACA issue,” said Durbin. “Democrats were willing to provide billions of dollars, at one point, for President Trump's unpopular wall to get the Bipartisan Dream Act, but we couldn't reach a good answer.”
Andrea Flores, a former Biden White House official who is now vice president of immigration policy and campaigns for the advocacy group Fwd.us, said Biden's decision to protect hundreds of thousands of immigrants from dangerous situations is being politicized after the election.
He noted that Temporary Protected Status is a bipartisan law that was established in 1990, has been used by presidents of both political parties and requires “strict judicial review of foreign policy and national circumstances.”
“Illegal things may prevent the Biden administration from participating,” he said. “The use of TPS historically has always reflected the best that our country does, which is to protect people fleeing harm from repressive regimes. Failure to act now, to protect those people we have welcomed and sheltered, would be a stain on the legacy of the Biden administration for years to come. ”
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