Some big, early shifts on immigration expected under Biden

Some dramatic moves on immigration are expected in the early days of the Biden administration.

Joe Biden will likely use executive orders to reverse some of President Donald Trump’s most controversial actions, rolling back moves that were a central feature of his administration and important to his base.

The Biden administration is more favourably disposed to immigration: Everest Group CEO

The Biden administration plans to restore protection for people brought to the US illegally as minors and stop using Pentagon funds to build a border wall. Biden unveiled a detailed, highly ambitious plan on immigration but it will take time to undo many actions taken by Trump.

The incoming president will also likely face a divided Congress, making it difficult to enact any kind of sweeping, comprehensive changes to the nation’s immigration system.

Restricting immigration was a signature issue for Trump, who infamously called Mexicans rapists as he pledged to build a border wall in launching his campaign. His administration banned travellers from some predominantly Muslim countries as one of its first acts, took many steps to limit legal immigration and cut the number of refugees allowed in the country by 80 per cent.

More moderate tack

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 signalling a more moderate tack.

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 incoming administration plans to reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme, which currently shields from deportation about 6,50,000 people who came to the country when they were young. He plans to overturn the travel ban on people visiting the US from 13 countries, many 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 US.

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

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.

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

President George W Bush called for a big immigration Bill, to no avail. Obama pushed for one as well, and it died in the House.

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