 | This article appears to incorporate text from a large language model, which is prohibited in Wikipedia articles. (September 2026) |
In the United States, a path (or pathway) to citizenship is proposed immigration reform providing a process whereby illegal immigrants can become citizens.
Obama Administration
During Barack Obama’s presidency, the federal government aggressively enforced immigration laws, detained undocumented immigrants and removed hundreds of thousands of people from the United States each year. Obama’s deportation record was significant enough that immigration activists referred to him as the “Deporter in Chief.”
The Obama administration also expanded the Secure Communities program nationwide, allowing fingerprints taken by local law enforcement to be checked against federal immigration databases so that people who could be deported could be identified and turned over for immigration enforcement.
Like Trump, Obama argued that the federal government had a responsibility to secure the border and remove people who were unlawfully in the country.
The major difference was not whether immigration laws should be enforced. It was largely who should be prioritized for deportation and how broadly enforcement should be applied.
Obama eventually focused enforcement heavily on recent illegal border crossers, national-security threats and people convicted of serious crimes, while giving lower priority to many undocumented immigrants who had lived in the United States for years and had no serious criminal record.
Trump expanded those enforcement priorities, arguing that being in the country illegally itself makes someone subject to immigration enforcement.
So while their policies were certainly not identical, the basic concepts we are seeing today — ICE arrests, detention, deportation, cooperation with local law enforcement and removal of people who entered the country illegally — existed and were used extensively under the Obama administration as well.
In 2018, president Donald Trump proposed a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who had arrived as children in exchange for $25 billion in funds to build a border wall. The deal was not successful.
Biden introduced the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 on his first day in office. Lobbying for the bill in the United States Senate was led by Sen. Bob Menendez, who indicated gathering the necessary 10 Republican votes to overcome a Senate filibuster would be a 'herculean' challenge.
Multiple polls conducted during Obama's presidency have found that a large majority of Americans support a path to citizenship, but with stronger support among Democrats than among Republicans.
A poll conducted in February 2017 found that 87% of Democrats and 69% of Republicans supported a path to citizenship, as did 72% of President Donald Trump's supporters.
Polling conducted in June 2024 found that 56% of Joe Biden supporters and 15% of Trump supporters supported a pathway to citizenship.
 | This article related to the politics of the United States is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |