President Biden plans to repeal strict restrictions on legal immigration that former President Donald Trump said were necessary to protect U.S. workers during the coronavirus-induced economic recession, according to a White House official.
Mr. Biden plans to sign an executive order revoking the proclamation suspending certain immigrant and work visas, Esther Olavarria told U.S. mayors this past weekend. According to a recording of the virtual meeting shared with CBS News. Olavarria is deputy director of the White House Home Affairs Council and one of the president’s best immigration advisers.
The forthcoming order, Olavarria said, “will repeal the Trump proclamations that prevented the admission of immigrants and non-immigrants, either a financial burden on our health care system or a risk to the U.S. labor markets.”
“It was policies that ignored the decades, and centuries actually, of contributions that immigrants have made to our economy, to our society, to our culture,” Olavarria said during the 89th Winter Conference of Mayors. “So we will repeal the policy and return to a country that welcomes immigrants and recognizes their contributions.”
It is unclear when Mr. Biden plans to sign the proclamation, but he plans to issue several immigration actions on Friday is delayed. The White House did not comment.
Evan Vucci / AP
Olavarria’s remarks are the first indication of the Biden administration’s position on the visa limits. During the campaign and the transition, Mr. Biden did not address the policy, nor did his advisers commit him to repealing it.
Less than a month before Mr. Biden has taken up his post, Mr. Trump order a three-month extension of the restrictions, which was first issued in April 2020 as a ban on prospective immigrants and broadened in June to also suspend several temporary work visas, such as the H-1B program.
Mr. Trump’s proclamation, which is due to expire on March 31, bans the issuance of single immigrant visas to people who want to move permanently to the U.S. through green card requests submitted by their U.S. relatives or prospective employers.
Spouses and children 21 or younger of U.S. citizens are not subject to visa restrictions, which also exempt health workers who fight the pandemic, as well as wealthy immigrants who agree to invest more than $ 1 million in U.S. projects.
Mr. Trump’s proclamation also freezes 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 would-be immigrants who won the lottery last year, but they remain banned from entering the U.S. within the proclamation.
The restrictions also halted the issuance of several temporary visas used by people to work in the US, including the H-1B program popular in the technology sector and H-2B visas for seasonal non-agricultural workers . J-1 cultural exchange visas for au pairs and other short-term workers; matrimonial visas of H-1B and H-2B holders; and L visas for companies to relocate employees to the U.S. are also restricted.
The government is currently banning the use of visa limits on workers sponsored by several large U.S. companies due to a court ruling in October.
Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said Trump’s pandemic visa restrictions had some resilience because they were imposed on economic grounds. Although she believes the limits do not benefit American workers, Pierce predicted that lifting them would cause some backlash.
Convincing a section of the U.S. population to lift the restrictions will not be an easy task, Pierce said, referring to the current unemployment rate of 6.7%.
“The economic crisis is still here and it’s a big problem for the United States,” Pierce told CBS News. “Biden will have to give reasons why he feels it is right to undo these proclamations despite their alleged benefits to the US economy.”
Pierce’s group estimates that more than 8,000 green card requests were blocked between April and November 2020 due to the restrictions of Mr. Trump.
Olavarria said Mr. Biden will also issue a proclamation that Mr. Trump issued in October 2019, recalling to enable the government to reject visa applications from immigrants who, according to him, can not pay for health insurance or cover medical costs in the US.
According to an outline of the expected actions obtained by CBS News, Mr. Bid to sign an additional mandate instructing officials to review the ‘public indictment’ rules that allow consular and immigration officials to suspend green card and visa applications from applicants who are, or are at risk of, trusting. public assistance, such as food stamps.