Panetta Provides Immigration Update, By Jondi Gumz

COMMUNITY NEWS Panetta Provides Immigration Update

By Jondi Gumz

On Aug. 17, U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta, co-sponsor of the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 to reform immigration, hosted a virtual town hall on immigration issues.

That bill, backed by President Joe Biden, would create a path for undocumented individuals to become lawful permanent residents after five years, keep immigrating families together, provide funding for ports of entry to process asylum seekers and prevent narcotics from entering the U.S., and provide aid to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras conditioned on their ability to reduce the corruption, violence, and poverty that motivates people to flee their homelands.

Introduced in February, the bill has stalled in the Senate, where Democrats support it but 10 Republican votes are needed for passage.

“We’ll try to deal with it in reconciliation,” Panetta said, referring to the budget process in which a bill can be passed by a simple majority vote, and Vice President Kamala Harris can provide the tie-breaking vote.

Panetta’s town hall came five days after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas provided data on border security, reporting 212,672 cases of attempted entry along the Southwest border in July, an all–time high.

Mayorkas said 27 percent had tried to

cross the border at least once before, putting the number of individuals trying to cross at 154,288. He said 95,788 individuals were processed for expulsion under Title 42 to prevent COVID-19 from spreading, a policy that will be reviewed by the U.S. Center for Disease Control in 60 days. Panetta said the Biden administration is accepting children and unaccompanied minors. He added that Vice President Harris is working on legislation “in the next couple months” to deal with the root cause of why people are fleeing their Central America homelands. The Afghanistan situation, in which the Jimmy Panetta Taliban toppled the government and took over, could lead to another refugee crisis, Panetta said. His office is seeing a “deluge of requests” from family members who want to get their loved ones out of Afghanistan, he said, and is working with the State Department to process those requests. Asked if immigrants are getting the COVID-19 vaccine, Panetta said, “Definitely. It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, it will not affect your documented status.” He gave this example: The GrowerShipper Association of Central California teamed up with Clinica de Salud Del Valle de Salinas to vaccinate 40,000 field workers, hailed on July 23 as a model by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, formerly California’s attorney general.

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