The Outlook of US Immigration under President Biden!
By
Dev Banad Viswanath, Esq.
The 2020 presidential election in the United States was a historic and extremely stressful event. We as a nation have been sending in ballots by mail, absentee ballots, and early voting for at least three weeks. Then, on November 3, we had the traditional election day voting, and by November 4, we still did not have a clear winner who would become the next President of the United States. Several states were still counting all of the ballots that had been sent in by mail. Amazing was the sheer number of voters in this election! Overall, nearly 150 million people cast ballots. 76.5 million for former Vice President Biden, 71.5 million for the President Trump, and another 2.5 million for candidates from other parties. However, the Electoral College and the votes cast by the various states through the electoral college are the most important factors in determining who will ultimately be the President of the United States. And it wasn't until Saturday, November 7th, that the Associated Press and a lot of other news outlets finally declared Joe Biden the president-elect after he won several important states and passed the 270-vote threshold. Although it is true that President Trump asserts that there was widespread voter fraud and that Biden did not actually win the election, the upcoming legal challenges remain unclear. For the purposes of this article, we also make the assumption that Joseph R. Biden, Jr. will most likely take office on January 20, 2021. This raises the question of what a President Biden administration's immigration policies and actions might be like.
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Biden, the incoming vice president, has already stated that he intends to revoke a number of current standing executive orders. For immigration purposes, I believe this indicates that any suspension orders issued by President Trump regarding the suspension of H1B, L1, or even Immigrant Visa (Green Card) applicants' visa processing will probably be lifted if they are still in place (currently, President Trump has kept many of his suspension orders to end on December 31, 2020). In addition, the next administration may eliminate the enhanced Public Charge rules to make it more difficult for visa and status applicants to demonstrate that they will not become a public charge.
Mr. Biden might also talk about the new administrative rules that the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor released recently. These rules would not only make it harder to prove H1B status by raising the requirements for what constitutes a specialty occupation and how an employer-employee relationship is defined, but they would also vastly increase prevailing wage rates to discourage foreign hiring. If President Biden were in office, I think he would repeal those regulations, if they were even in place, and get the agencies to do the same. I seriously doubt that they will be in place by January 20, 2121, due to the ongoing legal challenges that are being brought against them.
Also, I think that some rules that made it harder and, in some ways, impossible for asylum seekers to overcome the obstacles they had to overcome in order to get protection will be changed. When it comes to safeguarding the integrity of asylum in the United States, Mr. Biden has already mentioned the nature of the US's role as a model for the rest of the world.
Taking everything into consideration, I believe that the Biden administration will also advocate for comprehensive immigration reform or a number of important pieces of immigration legislation (such as the DREAM Act and removal reform, as we all increased the number of employment options for foreign nationals). In order to prevent Visa Overstay and other violations, I have no doubt that measures for deportation and removal will be further developed, and that regulations governing how individuals enter and remain in the United States will be tightened. However, if immigrants and the idea of an American Dream, of a meritocracy, that anyone can come to this country and make it, are restored, we can safely say that Joe Biden's America will be much more welcoming. Understanding the next steps and our path for the next four years will depend heavily on the next few months.
