HOUSTON – When President Joe Biden revoked former President Donald Trump’s ban on immigrant visas from many Muslim-majority countries on his very first day in office, he was excited about the change.
“I was so happy, so happy,” said Safieh Mohammadi, an American green card holder who lives in Houston and has been divorced for five years, from her Iranian husband, Bahram, who is currently in Canada. “I started doing something because I knew my husband was coming. So I went to the store and got a cover for my bed. I wanted to do something, you know, because I thought he was coming. ‘
But Biden’s reversal of one of Trump’s signature actions did not lead to a flood of airport reunions or rapid changes to his visa application. Instead, like almost all the families affected by the ban, their case was caught. Her case is ongoing and she has no idea when her family will be together again.
“I have to take care of my child, go to work, go to school and manage the whole thing like a single mother,” she said. “I’m not single. So it’s really hard. I just want my family back. That’s it. We came here legally and my husband wants to come here legally. ”
Mohammadi is just one of thousands of people in America who are still living in separation from their loved ones due to the fact that the former president was called ‘Muslim ban’. Her sister Massy, an American citizen, has been separated from her adult children for years.
Trump’s executive order in 2017 led to large protest rallies at airports and in major cities across the country. Several repetitions of the ban have been disputed by the legal system and rejected in the courts, but one version was eventually ratified by the Supreme Court in 2018. Various countries were added to the list, which eventually became known as presidential proclamations 9645 and 9983 banning. most immigration from 13 countries: Myanmar, Eritrea, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Nigeria, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Venezuela and Yemen.
According to statistics from the Department of Foreign Affairs, more than 40,000 applications have been rejected since September due to the ban. But the number does not include people with applications that do not hang, or the unknown number of people from these countries who have never applied for fear of rejection.
These issues have been taken up in a huge backlog of immigrant visas that has increased significantly over the past year, thanks in part to coronavirus travel and social distance restrictions, closures and adjustments at embassies and consulates abroad.
In January 2020, approximately 75,000 immigrant visa cases pending at the National Visa Center were ready for interviews, but as of February 2021, there were 473,000 cases, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services Julie Stufft announced during an information session earlier this month. This number does not even include cases where the applicants have not yet been interviewed or where individuals are still gathering the necessary documents.
A State Department official cited the declining revenue from the coronavirus as a reason why this visa deficit is building up, and said in a statement to NBC News: ‘The Bureau of Consular Affairs is mainly dependent of income from visa and passport fees to finance our operations. The dramatic reduction in fee income due to the pandemic will have a lasting effect on our staff and available resources for several years. ”
A contribution to the backlog also aims to protect Trump’s freezing point on green cards issued during the pandemic last year. Biden reissued them in February.
There is no timeline for how soon these issues can be addressed, and this only adds to the anxiety among people who have been divorced for years.
For Mosed Mohamed and his son, American citizens who lived in the Bay Area in California every day, it was difficult. His Yemeni wife lives in Cairo, separated from them while facing numerous health issues.
While Biden offers hope of lifting the ban, and Mosed recently received an email from the embassy to resubmit his wife’s paperwork, he describes the waiting game as cruel, “running in a tunnel with all darkness, there is no end to it. “
“We ask for nothing else – just to be with the family, the single family, that’s it,” he said. “Watching your children right before your eyes, you know, it’s hard. I mean, we work hard to get to America, to live out the dream, but not just for me or my son. I need my wife to be there, because without her, I mean, the family is not there, it’s nothing. ”
Mohamed’s immigration lawyer, Lina Baroudi, who represents a number of cases related to the travel ban, said he is her only client who has recently received an update.
“What I see is a tragedy across the board,” she said. ‘I do not want to just frame it, because it’s a sad situation, because it’s more than that, it’s furious. Because this is something that can be changed by the US government, and they need to accept responsibility and accountability. … I have all sorts of issues, you know, spouses trying to reunite with their spouses and their children. I have a few cases of American citizens requesting their children. Their adult children are basically waiting to come here. ”
Safieh Mohammadi even wrote a personal letter to Biden asking for help in speeding up her case. “I know he’s busy with Covid and everything in the country, but I asked him if it was possible to do something for us,” she said.
Her immigration lawyer, Mana Yegani, called the situation heartbreaking because “America is a place where we are proud of family unity, and we can see that families who are so separated really demand a toll from people.”
“If the Trump ban is not implemented, Bahram will now be in the United States with a green card,” she said. ‘His case was basically about to get a visa when the travel ban was signed, and that delayed his case for years. And now he is unfortunately falling behind in the system. ”