Biden Immigration Reforms (Continued)
Biden has begun to repeal Trump’s war on legal immigration. In his campaigns, Trump railed against undocumented workers (illegal aliens in his vernacular; once in office, Trump did whatever he possibly could to block immigrants from coming to the United States legally.
This is a partial summary of Biden’s actions and proposals to improve the process of legal immigration, which is what we want to encourage and facilitate because immigrants provide great value and economic benefit to our nation.
Immigrants pick our crops and produce our food supplies; they do many of the jobs with low pay and low benefits. https://www.farmaid.org/blog/fact-sheet/immigration-and-the-food-system/ They provide the high tech talent for our globally dominant tech industry. https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/2013-spch051813laahtm They are entrepreneurs reviving our small towns and playing key roles in improving our service economy and health care industry. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-immigrants-expand-the-u-s-economy/
Biden’s agenda for legal immigration includes:
· Hiring new immigration judges to adjudicate the enormous backlog of asylum claims and applications.
· Barring the family separation policy and trying to reunite those children and families separated at the border.
· Eliminating the per country caps on immigration for spouses and children
· Increase the visas for crime victims cooperating with the police from 10,000 to 30,000
· Establishing processing centers for asylum application in Central America; financial assistance for Central America designed to reduce the flows of illegal immigration
· Eliminating the “stay in Mexico” rules for asylum seekers
· Increase the numbers of employment-based and diversity green card visas
· Improve border security technology and stop building Trump’s wall
· End the Muslim ban
· Increase the cap on refugee immigrants from 15,000 to 125,000
· Increase work visas for STEM graduates of US colleges and universities
· End the 3 and 10 year bans on re-entry for those who have been in the country illegally and been deported or otherwise removed
· Revising Trump’s “public charge” policies disqualifying status adjustment for those receiving Medicaid and other public benefits
· Adjust legal immigration admission caps based on economic conditions in the US.
Prepared by: Lucien Wulsin
Dated: 2/20/21