One of the central issues of the 2016 presidential race, immigration was rocket-fuel for Donald Trump’s insurgent candidacy. But immigration has played much less of a role in the 2020 campaign. It received little attention in the initial presidential debates, and the third debate’s brief discussion of the issue was mostly confined to border policies. Nor have the Trump or Biden campaigns led with this issue.
The relative lack of discussion of Biden’s immigration platform has obscured the scope of his plans for immigration as well as the tensions within his vision for immigration policy. Though he doesn’t talk about it much on the campaign trail, Biden is running on an agenda of increasing legal immigration. He supports expanding guest-worker programs, maintaining family preferences, giving a green card to everyone who earns a doctorate from an American university, increasing refugee admissions, and expanding employment-based visas. Many of these agenda items would require legislation, but they indicate Biden’s preferred direction for legal-immigration policy.
Comments