Biden Supports Including a Pathway to Citizenship for Thousands of Migrants in His $ 3.5 Trillion Social Plan

President Joe Biden, who has called for creating a path to citizenship for immigrants who are beneficiaries of the Deferred Action Program for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), said Thursday that the $ 3.5 billion package of dollars that it promotes should include this immigration issue.

"I think we should include the immigration proposal in the reconciliation bill

," Biden told reporters after his meeting with 11 Democratic legislators from the Hispanic Caucus.

Biden had said Sunday that he was not sure the immigration proposal could be included in the human infrastructure package that Democrats plan to pass through the reconciliation mechanism, a very limited-use legislative modality that would allow it to be carried forward despite Republican obstruction. .

In any case, the determination of whether it is feasible to include in the broad social package a path to citizenship for Dreamers and any other group of undocumented immigrants

will depend on the senator in charge of interpreting the internal rules and procedures

, Elizabeth McDonough.

Among the legislators who attended Thursday's meeting are Senators Dick Durbin, Bob Menéndez, Catherine Cortez Masto, Alex Padilla;

and representatives Ray Luján, Raul Ruiz, Linda Sánchez, Lucille Roybal-Allard and Pete Aguilar.

The meeting followed a hit by a federal court in Texas to the program that protects more than 650,000 young people from deportation who came to the United States at the hands of their parents without authorization, when they were still children.

Vice President Kamala Harris met last week with DACA recipients, as well as similarly unqualified immigrants who did not qualify for this program, in which she heard how the latest court decision was affecting them.

The judicial measure prevents the Government from continuing to process new applications after considering that the program is illegal, although it allows people who are already in the program to renew their protection, after considering that

“it would not be fair to suddenly end a government program that it has created such a remarkable dependency ”

.

Biden has promised that the government will appeal Judge Andrew Hanen's ruling to the Supreme Court.

If the measure is reversed by a higher court, the Administration could approve new DACA requests.

But it is not clear that the court, with a conservative majority, will maintain the program.

Farmworkers and dreamers meet in Congress to demand immigration reform

July 28, 202101: 03

For this reason, activists and legal experts argue that the best way to protect the fate of the dreamers would be through a legislative package, whose authority could not be questioned by the courts like that of an executive order.

The program was created in 2012 thanks to an executive order from the then president, Barack Obama.

But Republicans have challenged him numerous times, claiming he had exceeded his executive powers.

The recent court decision has pushed for the approval of

a law that definitively protects Dreamers

, which has been blocked in Congress for years.

["If you have DACA, you keep your DACA": who are affected by the ruling of a federal judge against the program that protects dreamers]

“I have repeatedly asked Congress to pass the

American Dream and Promise Act

, and now I renew that call with the utmost urgency. It is my fervent hope that through reconciliation or other means, Congress will finally bring security to all Dreamers, who have lived too long in fear, "Biden said on the day the court's ruling was released in Texas.