Will provide access to citizenship to 11 mn illegal immigrants if elected: Biden

Washington DC: Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has vowed to provide citizenship to 11 million illegal immigrants if voted to power in the November 3 presidential election.

Biden identified this as one of his priorities in addition to beating the Coronavirus pandemic, rebuilding the economy and figuring out how to restore American leadership around the world.

Responding to a question at a virtual fundraiser on Wednesday, Biden said there is a need to deal with what's going on at the border.

We're going to have to deal with the immigration crisis we have. I'm going to send the House and Senate an immigration bill that's going to provide access to citizenship to 11 million people, he said.

President Donald Trump has been repeatedly calling for the quick deportation of illegal immigrants who "invade" the US and lamented that the current immigration system is "unfair" to those who came legally to America.

Trump has been asserting that building a wall along the Mexico border is the only way to check illegal immigration, and on various occasions said that every day the US border patrol encounters roughly 2,000 illegal immigrants trying to enter the country.

According to Biden's campaign, there were 37 attendees and the event was hosted by Jane Hartley, former US Ambassador to France and Monaco and current Chairman, Sesame Workshop; Blair Effron, Founder & Partner, Centerview Partners; Indian American Deven Parekh, Managing Director, Insight Partners and Roger Altman, Founder & Senior Chairman, Evercore.

When asked how he would envision his first 30 days in office in terms of both domestic and foreign policy, Biden said: A lot more can go wrong between now and January 21, and I'm not being facetious. Four more years, we're not going to have the country we have now.