Big, Early Shifts on Immigration Expected under Biden

In the early days of the Biden administration, some drastic changes on immigration are expected. Joe Biden would possibly use executive orders to undo some of the most divisive acts of President Donald Trump, scaling back moves that were a key aspect of his presidency and significant to his base.

The Biden administration plans to restore security to immigrants illegally brought to the US as minors and to avoid using Pentagon funds to create a border wall. Biden released a comprehensive, highly ambitious immigration strategy, but it will take time to reverse several of Trump's actions. The next president is also expected to face a divided Congress, making it impossible to make some sort of sweeping, substantive reform to the nation's immigration system.

Here’s a look at what to expect:

A change of tone

Restricting immigration was a signature problem for Trump, who infamously branded Mexican rapists when he vowed to create a border wall as he launched his campaign. His administration barred travelers from certain predominantly Muslim countries as one of its first actions, took a number of steps to restrict legal immigration and reduced the number of refugees permitted in the country by 80 per cent.

Biden has said “immigration is central to who we are as a nation,” noting that most Americans can trace their ancestry to immigrants, but it isn’t a core issue. It’s not even mentioned on his transition website’s top priorities: Covid-19, economic recovery, racial justice and climate change.

Biden named Cecilia Munoz, President Barack Obama’s top immigration adviser, to his transition team, which some interpreted as signaling a more moderate tack.

Big, early moves

Biden has said he will move quickly to undo some of Trump’s signature immigration initiatives. The border wall? The roughly 400 miles built so far won’t come down but the new administration won’t keep building it or taking money from the Pentagon to fund it over the objections of Congress.

The new administration plans to reintroduce the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, which currently protects some 650,000 people from deportation who came to the country when they were young. It plans to overturn the travel ban on people entering the United States from 13 countries, all of them Muslim-majority.

One of Trump’s first moves in office was to tell immigration officials that everyone in the country illegally was subject to deportation. Biden is expected to return to criteria similar to what Obama adopted toward the end of his tenure, largely limiting deportations to people with serious criminal records in the United States.

Biden said he wants the government to help locate the parents of hundreds of children who were separated from their parents at the border early in Trump's administration.

Biden wants to get rid of policies that have been "detrimental" in seeking asylum — such as the policy of having asylum-seekers wait for US Immigration Court hearings in Mexico — but he is likely to step slowly to prevent further arrivals.

Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat who was a Biden appointee to the joint immigration task force with Bernie Sanders, said a resolution will require coordination with Mexico.

“This is a moment that’s going to require true leadership,” she said.

Why some changes will take time

Nearly every major policy change under Trump is in court and may take effort to disentangle, including considerations of protecting executive power. Other reversals would be subject to formal rule-making procedures that require time.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School, thinks Biden will move cautiously on asylum to avoid setting off a new wave of arrivals and says other changes will face “procedural and practical problems.”

Take the “public charge” rule, which disqualifies more people from green cards if they rely on government benefits. Biden wants it reversed but would need to go through the extensive, rule-making exercise. A federal appeals court sided with Trump on ending humanitarian protections that have allowed hundreds of thousands of people from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan to remain in the United States. Biden says only that he would order an “immediate review” of “Temporary Protected Status.”

Yale-Loehr, a strong critic of Trump’s policies, says it is “going to take four years to undo all the damage that the Trump administration has done” while Biden attends to the pandemic and other issues.

What could stay the same

At least initially, Biden may keep in place a Trump administration order that authorizes Customs and Border Protection to quickly expel any migrant as a public health measure during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Even critics question the health rationale for the order, the new administration may decide that it is important to prevent a rush of migrants and to protect Border Patrol agents and other CBP workers, says Doris Meissner, a former senior US immigration officer now with the Migration Policy Institute.

“This health circumstance is not likely to just disappear come January or February,” she says.

Prospects for major immigration overhaul

Biden says that he would "commit substantial political capital to eventually enact the legislative overhaul of immigration," which will be important to fix the problems of the American immigration system and to solve the fate of millions of undocumented immigrants living in the US. President George W. Bush called for a broad immigration bill, to no avail.  Obama pushed for one, too, and he died in the House.