(Washington) Joe Biden will implement regularization measures that could benefit hundreds of thousands of people, the White House announced on Tuesday, while immigration is a major subject of the presidential campaign in the United States.
It is also a politically delicate theme for the Democratic president, regularly accused of laxity on the matter by the man he will face during the November election, his Republican predecessor Donald Trump, with very virulent anti-immigration rhetoric.
Joe Biden recently announced a very clear tightening of his migration policy, to deal with the arrivals of migrants at the border with Mexico. But the 81-year-old Democrat, keen not to alienate progressive voters or those of foreign origin, at the same time praises the benefits of regulated immigration, through measures such as those announced on Tuesday.
The American president intends to facilitate the issuance of residence permits and work permits to immigrant spouses of American citizens and their children, according to a press release from the American executive.
“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.
Joe Biden also wants to speed up the work visa procedure for certain immigrants who have obtained a higher education diploma in the United States and have received a job offer in the country.
The measure will apply in particular to beneficiaries of a program protecting immigrant minors, put in place in 2012 when Barack Obama was president and whose twelfth anniversary Joe Biden will celebrate on Tuesday at the White House.
The Democrat’s campaign team also used this anniversary to broadcast a video in which beneficiaries of this program, known in the United States as “Dreamers”, attack the positions in English and Spanish. Donald Trump’s anti-immigration.
The former president wants to organize, in the event of his return to the White House, mass deportations of illegal immigrants. He also accused migrants of “poisoning the blood” of the country.