NJ Senator Calls for Innovative Approach to Enhance US Border Security

HI INDIA NEWS DESK
NEW JERSEY- Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, has released his “Menendez Plan,” a blueprint for addressing illegal immigration at the southern U.S. border. According to Menendez, his plan mainly consists of executive actions that President Joe Biden can take without Congressional approval until Republicans decide to participate in finding a solution. The plan has four pillars: creating new and expanding existing legal pathways to reduce pressure at the southwestern border, increasing resources at the border to process asylum seekers and remove those without legal claims to stay in the U.S., expanding humanitarian assistance and financing to better integrate migrants and refugees in the Americas, and elevating efforts to counter transnational criminal organizations involved in human trafficking and smuggling.

Some of the ideas in the plan include creating new pathways to legal citizenship, expanding access to visas, increasing humanitarian aid to the United Nations for several countries, and creating a “parole program” for people migrating to the U.S. and undocumented immigrants already in the country to help ease the labor shortage. The plan also suggests that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security internally relocate migrants to their final destinations and that families be processed in non-detained settings.

Senator Menendez believes that it is time to take a comprehensive approach to immigration reform that recognizes individual country conditions that drive irregular migration and not just focus on the U.S. southwest border. He previously attempted to champion an immigration policy overhaul with legislation that would have created an “earned roadmap to citizenship” for 11 million undocumented immigrants, but it failed to gain support in Congress.