The vice president-elect also said the new administration would try to decrease by five years the time required to obtain citizenship.
Magazine, Immigration, Politico By MATTHEW CHOI and ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
The incoming administration will focus on decreasing wait times to obtain citizenship, granting automatic green cards to protected undocumented immigrants and adding immigration judges to decrease backlogs on court hearings, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris said on Tuesday.
Speaking with Univision’s Ilia Calderón, Harris teased a sweeping immigration reform bill that her and President-elect Joe Biden’s administration plans to introduce. Harris said their bill would grant green cards immediately to immigrants protected by the Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policies. She added that the administration would also try to decrease the amount of time required to acquire U.S. citizenship to eight years from 13 years by making the naturalization process more efficient.
“It’s a smarter and much more humane way of approaching immigration,” Harris said of their legislative plans.
Harris also said they hoped to add more judges to relieve a backlog on immigration cases — a problem that President Donald Trump frequently used to justify stricter controls at the southern border.
