While running for President, Joe Biden railed against Donald Trump’s most flagrant anti-immigrant policies and promised to roll back the harm inflicted by his predecessor onto the country’s immigration system. Under Trump, the country that once welcomed the highest number of refugees in the world was surpassed by both Canada and Australia. Meanwhile, we witnessed some of the lowest levels of immigration in decades, as well as glaring discriminating directed toward those from Muslim countries.

Biden came to office with a bold immigration plan, but many political obstacles to implementation. Meanwhile, the country is facing a record number of asylum seekers at our southern borders. And, more broadly, civil wars, the COVID pandemic, and climate change have also meant a record number of displaced people across the globe. There are very real economic and demographic, not to mention moral, reasons why the modernization of our immigration system is long overdue. Dreamers, undocumented workers, and Temporary Protected Status holders living in the United States contribute to our society and our economy in countless ways and deserve a path to citizenship.

With the support of FWD.us, we gathered a group of distinguished experts from the realms both of policy and politics, and from both sides of the aisle, who offer a bipartisan, humane, and economically viable blueprint for immigration, as well as a compelling view of why this reform is so very urgent.