{"id":471132,"date":"2021-03-09T10:47:25","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T15:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=471132"},"modified":"2021-03-09T11:16:43","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T16:16:43","slug":"will-bidens-immigration-plan-encourage-illegal-immigration-471132","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/will-bidens-immigration-plan-encourage-illegal-immigration-471132\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Biden\u2019s immigration plan encourage illegal immigration?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not necessarily. There\u2019s another possible outcome according to Daniel Reichman<\/a>, a University of Rochester<\/a> expert on Central American migration.<\/p>\n

A central feature of President Biden\u2019s US Citizenship Act of 2021 is establishing a path toward citizenship for undocumented immigrants. According to some critics of the bill, that approach will simply encourage illegal immigration.<\/p>\n

At issue are provisions allowing undocumented individuals to apply for temporary legal status and a green card after five years in the US.<\/p>\n

Reichman, an associate professor of anthropology, writes in a USA Today opinion piece<\/a> that critics overlook evidence for another outcome\u2014namely that many immigrants, at least in the short term, would leave the US to return home.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor unauthorized immigrants, a trip home means risking everything \u2014 once they leave the US, they can\u2019t come back without taking on huge amounts of debt or putting their lives at stake,\u201d writes Reichman. While migrants come to the US for wages, \u201ctheir hearts often remain back home. They communicate with their hometowns constantly and they dream of returning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reichman says that it does remain possible that illegal immigration will rise. Whether that comes to pass depends on multiple factors, including \u201cthe social conditions in immigrants\u2019 countries of origin, the state of the US economy, and the nitty-gritty details about visa quotas in Biden\u2019s proposed legislation,\u201d he adds. \u201cThat said, it is a mistake to view a path to citizenship only as an invitation to future migrations. For Central Americans who have been kept apart from their families for far too long, amnesty might mean going home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reichman has conducted field research in Honduras since 2001, focusing on emigration to the United States, the coffee industry, and evangelical religion. His book, The Broken Village: Coffee, Migration, and Globalization in Honduras<\/a> (Cornell University Press, 2011) is an ethnography of one Honduran town’s transformation from a coffee-growing economy to a migration-based economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By enabling undocumented workers to travel freely between the US and their home countries, it may actually enable them to return home, writes Daniel Reichman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":471172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29212],"tags":[21622,21512,16072],"class_list":["post-471132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-voices-opinion","tag-daniel-reichman","tag-department-of-anthropology","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWill Biden\u2019s immigration plan encourage illegal immigration?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By enabling undocumented workers to travel freely between the US and their home countries, it may actually enable them to return home.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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