President Biden plans to rescind the strict legal immigration limits that former President Donald Trump said were needed to protect U.S. workers during the coronavirus-induced economic recession, according to a senior White House official.
Mr Biden plans to sign an executive order to rescind the proclamation suspending certain immigrant and work visas, Esther Olavarria told US mayors over the weekend, according to a recording of the virtual meeting shared with CBS News. Olavarria is deputy director of the White House Interior Policy Council and one of the president’s top immigration advisers.
The next order, Olavarria said, “would terminate Trump’s proclamations that prevented the admission of immigrants and nonimmigrants that were considered a financial burden on our health care system or that posed a risk to U.S. labor markets.”
“They were policies that really ignored the decades and centuries of the contributions that immigrants have made to our economy, to our society, to our culture,” Olavarria said during the 89th Winter Meeting of the Conference. of Mayors of the United States. “Therefore, we would rescind these policies and return to a country that welcomes immigrants and recognizes their contributions.”
It is unclear when Biden intends to sign the proclamation, but his plans to issue several immigration actions on Friday have been delayed. The White House made no comment.
Evan Vucci / AP
Olavarria’s statements represent the first indication of the Biden administration’s views on visa limits. During the campaign and the transition, Mr. Biden did not address the policy nor did his advisers agree to repeal it.
Less than a month before Biden took office, Trump ordered a three-month extension of the restrictions, first enacted in April 2020 as a ban on some potential immigrants and extended in June to also suspend several temporary work visas, such as the H-1B program .
Trump’s proclamation, which is currently due to expire on March 31, prohibits the issuance of some immigrant visas for people who want to move permanently to the United States through green card applications filed by their American relatives or potential employers.
Spouses and children aged 21 and under are not subject to visa limits, which also exempts some health workers fighting the pandemic, as well as wealthy immigrants who agree to invest more than one. million dollars in American projects.
Trump’s proclamation also froze the diversity visa lottery, a program that allows people from underrepresented countries, many of them in Africa, to move to the United States. In September, a federal judge ordered the government to issue visas to more than 9,000 potential immigrants who won the lottery last year but are banned from entering the U.S. under the proclamation.
The restrictions have also stopped the issuance of several temporary visas that people use to work in the U.S., including the popular H-1B program in the technology sector and H-2B visas for non-agricultural seasonal workers. Cultural exchange of J-1 visas for au pair and other short-term workers; visas for spouses of H-1B and H-2B holders; and L visas have also been restricted for companies to relocate employees to the US.
The government is currently banned from applying visa limits to workers sponsored by several major U.S. companies due to a court ruling in October.
Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the nonprofit migration policy institute, said Trump’s pandemic-era visa restrictions have had “some staying power” because they have been enacted for economic reasons. While he believes the limits do not benefit American workers, Pierce predicted that lifting them will fuel some setbacks.
Convincing a segment of the U.S. population that restrictions must be lifted will not be an easy task, said Pierce, who cited the current 6.7% unemployment rate.
“The economic crisis is still here and it’s a huge problem for the United States,” Pierce told CBS News. “Biden will have to present reasons why it considers it right to undo these proclamations despite its supposed benefits to the U.S. economy.”
Pierce’s group estimates that more than 8,000 green card requests were blocked between April and November 2020 due to Trump’s restrictions.
Olavarria said Biden will also overturn a proclamation Trump issued in October 2019 to allow the government to reject immigrant visa applications that determines he will not be able to pay for health insurance or cover medical costs in the U.S. .
According to an outline of the expected executive actions obtained by CBS News, Mr. Biden plans to sign an additional directive asking officials to review the rules on “public office” that allow consular and immigration officials to deny visa and green card applications to applicants to trust or be at risk of dependency. of public assistance, such as food stamps.