Joe Biden lifts trump era ban on issuance of green cards & eases immigration policies
The policy of former president Trump of not issuing green cards from the spring of 2020 untill the March of 2021 to protect the US labour market from unemployment during this volatile pandemic period has been reversed by President Biden. Trump had deemed immigrants a “risk to the US labour market” and blocked their entry to the United States by issuing Proclamation 10014 and Proclamation 10052. President Biden has also relaxed various other curbs on immigration visa’s which was imposed by his predecessor.
Biden reversing the decision stated that shutting the door on legal immigrants “does not advance the interests of the United States. To the contrary, it harms the United States, including by preventing certain family members of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents from joining their families here. It also harms industries in the United States that utilize talent from around the world,”
Most immigrant visas were blocked by the orders, according to immigration lawyers. As many as 1,20,000 family-based preference visas were lost largely because of the pandemic-related freeze in the 2020 Budget year, according to the American Immigrant Lawyers Association. Immigrants could not bring over family members unless they were US citizens applying for visas for their spouses or children under the age of 21. It also barred entry to immigrants with employment-based visas unless they were considered beneficial to the national interest such as health care professionals. And it slammed the door on thousands of visa lottery winners who were randomly chosen from a pool of about 14 million applicants to be given green cards that would let them live permanently in the United States.
The blocked visas add to a growing backlog that has reached 4,37,000 for family-based visas alone, said California immigration lawyer Curtis Morrison, who represented thousands of people blocked by the freeze. “I’m thrilled for my clients who are now in a position that they can now enter the US,” he said. “But that backlog will take years if the administration does not take ambitious measures.”
Biden’s actions come only days after thousands of visa lottery winners at risk of having their visas expire won a court order that put their visas on hold by the judge in the case. Now they will be allowed to use their visas to enter the country. The United States makes available up to 55,000 visas a year for immigrants whose nationalities are underrepresented in the US population. The visas must be used within six months of being obtained.
Meanwhile, Biden has proposed legislation that would limit presidential authority to issue future bans against immigrants.
The president has not said whether there will be any redress for visa lottery winners who lost out because of the pandemic-era policies. But he is calling for the US to increase the number of diversity visas available via the lottery each year from 55,000 to 80,000.
Mr. Biden had earlier revoked the Trump administration’s emergency declaration that helped fund the building of a wall along the Mexican border and also ended a travel ban on some majority-Muslim countries.
This is not the first time that President Biden has reversed an order of his predecessor, in fact on his first day in office as the 46th President of the US, he signed 15 executive orders most of which undid the policies of President Trump. The most noted policy change came on the coronavirus pandemic and the climate change accord both of which were not considered serious enough by the previous administration
On coronavirus, a series of measures will be enacted to tackle the pandemic which has claimed more than 400,000 lives in the US. There will be a mandate to wear masks and practise social distancing on all federal government property. A new office will be set up to co-ordinate the response to the pandemic and the US will halt the process – begun by the Trump administration – of withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO). The move to re-engage with the WHO was welcomed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who said it was “absolutely critical” for a more co-ordinated global response, his spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said.
Mr. Biden has also pledged to make the fight against climate change a top priority of his administration. He signed an executive order beginning the process of re-joining the 2015 Paris climate agreement, from which Mr. Trump formally withdrew the US last year. Mr. Biden has also revoked the presidential permit granted to the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline, which environmentalists and Native American groups have fought for more than a decade. The privately financed pipeline – estimated to cost about $8bn (£5.8bn) – would carry about 830,000 barrels of heavy crude a day from the oil sands of Alberta, in Canada, to Nebraska.
