Immigration constitutes the hallmark of political discussion in the United States, with legislators weighing security, humanitarian, and economic concerns. In one of the new administration 's executive orders, President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. pronounced his commitment to reforming the United States' immigration system through the Citizenship Act of 2021. The proposed legal reforms will focus on prioritizing family unity, modernizing the immigration system, growing the economy, and ensuring that the country remains a sanctuary for people fleeing oppressions (Börk et al., 2021). This memo describes the new immigration reforms proposed under the Unites States Citizenship Act of 202, the reasons I support the proposals' implementation, and the data supporting the policy.
Description of the policy
The proposed bill's goal is to restructure various aspects of immigration from family and employment grounded immigration to refugee, asylum, and other forms of humanitarian protection immigration. The United States Citizenship Act of 2021 proposed a pathway to citizenship for people without legal status and were physically present in the United States on January 1st, 2021. The Act also proposes to allow green card holders and temporary residents to apply for permanent residency and citizenship upon passing background checks. These proposals' immediate beneficiaries will be agricultural workers, dreamers, and recipients of temporary protected status (Börk et al., 2021). Also, the policy proposes reforms on family and employment-based immigration. It seeks to clear backlogs, recapture unutilized visas, increase per-country visa caps and eliminate the lengthy waiting duration.
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Besides, the policy will reorganize the immigration system by restoring values and humanity in the system. The policy proposes a No Ban Act to rescind President Donald Trump's Muslim Ban. The policy will prohibit discrimination of immigrants on a religious basis and limit presidential power to issue such bans in the future (Ries, 2020). The Act also proposes a change in the use of the term "alien" in reference to noncitizens and foreign nationals and recommends its replacement with "noncitizen” throughout the Immigration and Nationality Act and its regulatory body.
Why I support implementation of the new immigration legislation
Immigration has for the longest time been a distinguishing characteristic of the United States, and it still is one of the states' competitive economic advantage. Immigrants play a pivotal part in engineering the US's economic prosperity through entrepreneurship, paying taxes, reducing dependency ratio, and improving the stability of social security trust fund and Medicare. Immigrants also contributed significantly in providing labor force for the American industries, fishing, forestry, construction, cleaning, and agricultural sector (lee, 2017). Immigrants help fill job gaps left by the aging and retiree baby boomer generation in addition to working as home nurses, doctors, and housekeepers. Moreover, immigrants have been recognized as key contributors to the highly reputable status of the United States with regard to innovation and technology. Case in point, the founders of major high-tech start-ups in the United States, including Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, Youtube, among others, are immigrants and their descendants.
In the long run, opening up the country for immigrants is a profound economic investment. The paybacks from immigrants are substantial and exceed the cost by far, especially if accompanied by effective and well-thought policies. Therefore, I support the implementation of the newly proposed immigration legislation, whose intent is to open America for immigrants and secure the citizenship of those already living in the country.
Statistical data in support of the policy
According to the Current Population Survey (CPS) of 2020, the immigrants and their generation consist of 85.7 million people making up 26 percent of the United States population. Collectively, the immigrants contribute up to 11.74 billion US dollars to local and state reserves annually ( Lee, 2017) in the form of personal income taxes, sales tax, excise, and property tax as prescribed by the United States' economic policy, the institute of local and state tax contributions by immigrants. With increased immigration, foreign-born contribution to fees would increase by 2.2 billion increasing their tax rate to 8.6 percent ( Lee, 2017) . It is estimated that for every one hundred thousand increase in immigrants, the trust fund's long-term actuarial equilibrium improves by nearly 0.8 percent of taxable payroll (Luu, 2017) . U ndocumented persons in the United States in the year 2010 were reported to contribute 13 billion US dollars into the security fund accounts and only received 1 billion US dollars in return. Foreign-born individuals have added nearly 300 billion US dollars to the trust fund, without which; the social security trust fund may not pay benefits in full beyond 2037 ( Levin et al., 2017 ). Therefore, congress ought to pass the proposals of the immigration reforms in the Citizenship Act of 2021 into law to encourage immigrants into the United States due to their immense contribution to the social security fund's economy and stability.
How the data support the policy?
The evidence that immigrants, their descendants, and unregistered persons make significant contributions to the economic growth, stability of social funds, and diversification of the labor market is overwhelming and cannot be disputed. Partly, the evidence provided above informed the current immigration reforms proposed in the United States' Citizenship Act of 2021. President Biden recognizes the pivotal role that immigrants play in building the economy. For instance, Biden proposed a bill that would grow the United States’ economy by reforming work-based immigration. The bill seeks to clear backlogs of work-based visas, reduce the long waiting times and recapture unused visas. This bill will also generate a program to kindle regional economic development.
References
Börk, K., Moyle, P., Durand, J., Hung, T. C., & Rypel, A. L. (2021) Priorities for President-elect Biden's EPA.
Lee, R. (2017). The economic and fiscal consequences of immigration.
Luu, L. B. (2017). Immigrants and the Industries of United States, 1500–1700 . Routledge.
Levin, J. A., Fox, J. A., & Forde, D. R. (2017). Elementary statistics in social research (12th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.
Ries, L. (2020). President Trump and Joe Biden: Comparing Immigration Policies. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved from .
