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Local immigration expert reacts to Biden plan

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(WKOW) -- On his first day in office office, President-elect Biden plans to introduce a sweeping immigration bill.

"It's a big bill. It's aggressive, but it is what Biden promised to do," Erin Barbato, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at the University of Wisconsin - Madison Law School said.

The plan outlines an 8-year plan to citizenship for a estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants without legal status. Dreamers and those with temporary protected status could also qualify for green cards more quickly under the proposed legislation.

Barbato said this legislation could be a "momentous change" - especially in the local area.

"It could mean a future for so many people where over the past four years, especially in Dane County, we saw ICE attack our immigrant communities in a way that was aggressive and was to cause fear. This would be the opposite," she said.

She said DACA recipients in the community haven't had any pathway to citizenship yet and Biden's plan has the power to change that.

Barbato added that the legislation is a big step away from the Trump-era immigration policies.

"It differs in almost every single way. We've come from four years of restrictionist policies where we have closed our borders and eliminated basically every form of humanitarian relief," Barbato said. "This is a return to more humanitarian base and vision for our immigration policies."

While she is "cautiously hopeful" that the immigration bill will pass, she said it will be a long fight through the next eight years.

"I'm just hopeful that this legislation and this movement in the right direction will really create a United States that will again be a leader in humanitarian relief for people," Barbato said. "As well as recognizing that we are a country formed of immigrants and that's the future that we will always have."