Immigration Policy During Biden’s First Two Months and What’s Ahead: An Overview

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By Grace Anderson

In Biden’s first two months in office, he has revoked many Trump-era immigration policies. While some are hopeful for a complete overhaul of the immigration system later in his term, Biden’s administration has a large task ahead of them reevaluating the more than 1,000 policy changes to the immigration system that occurred under Trump. The new Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, explained the current situation saying “quite frankly, the entire system was gutted” under Trump, and asked for patience as the new administration tries to rebuild the system. Biden has taken steps in his first couple months in office to revoke some of the most glaringly unjust immigration policies, but it will take time to rebuild the gutted and dysfunctional bureaucracy of the immigration system — let alone solve the many problems that preceded the Trump administration. However, some notable accomplishments have been made in the past few months to help restore the immigration system and make it more humane and accessible: 

  • In his first day in office, Biden released his massive immigration package plan and signed several executive orders. These included rescinding Trump’s 2017 ‘Muslim Travel Ban’, which banned citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US, and halting construction of the southern border wall.

  • Biden has shown his commitment to reigning in ICE and deportations. Biden announced a 100-day moratorium on deportations to allow his administration time to review and reverse some of Trump’s immigration policies. However, a federal judged banned the administration from enforcing this moratorium. But, on February 18, the Biden administration released a memo outlining new ICE enforcement policies. The new guidance directs ICE to focus solely on noncitizens who have recently crossed the border illegally or have been convicted of an aggravated felony, such as murder or rape. The goal of this policy change is to halt the “ICE raids” and deportations of unsuspecting, law-abiding undocumented immigrants and non-dangerous immigrants who commit minor offenses.

  • On March 6, ICE said in federal court that it is transitioning from family detention centers to short-term facilities that are required to release families after no more than 72 hours. The detention center in Pennsylvania has been closed and the other two in Texas are transitioning to short-term centers. This achievement is not due to the Biden administration, but to years of litigation and advocacy on behalf of detained families.

  • Starting Feb. 19, asylum-seekers who are the most at-risk or have been waiting the longest in Mexico near the border, usually in poor conditions, under Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, are eligible to enter the US while they wait for their day in court to petition for asylum.

  • On Feb 24, Biden rescinded Presidential Proclamation 10014 (known as the “immigrant visa ban”) which Trump issued in the early stages of COVID, which mainly affected individuals applying for employment-based green cards.

  • On March 11, The Department of State extended its expanded interview waiver eligibility policy for applicants of nonimmigrant visas until December 31, 2021. This allows consular officers to waive the in-person interview requirement for persons trying to renew their visa (of the same nonimmigrant classification and category) as long as no more than 48 months have passed since their visa expired. This policy aims to cut down on the unnecessary and burdensome task of re-interviewing individuals who have previously undergone the interview process and can continue to establish their eligibility for the visa sought.

  • On March 9, DHS Secretary Mayorkas announced that the government will no longer defend the 2019 Public Charge Rule, saying that it “was not in keeping with our nation’s values” and “penalized those who access health benefits and other government services.” Under the public charge rule, immigrants who are deemed likely to become a “public charge” (rely on government assistance) could be denied visas due to their lack of financial resources or marketable skills. Although the public charge rule has been around for decades, it was vastly expanded by the Trump administration in 2019, requiring additional burdensome paperwork for applicants and further clogging the immigration system’s bureaucracy.

  • The State Department announced its plan to reinstitute the Central American Minors (CAM) program, which allowed eligible children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to be reunited with their parent/s who are lawfully living in the US. The program was terminated in 2017 despite having reunited nearly 5,000 children with their families. The first phase of reinstituting the CAM program will be to process the applications that were pending when the program was closed in 2017, and then to begin accepting new applications.

What Lies Ahead?

Despite the positive impacts of these policy changes, they will not ‘fix’ the US’s very broken immigration system. In fact, most of these changes are ushering in a “return to normalcy” after four years of increasingly stringent, arbitrary, and chaotic immigration policy under Trump, and there are many more difficult decisions ahead facing Biden. However, there is hope that with bipartisan support in congress, the Biden administration can transform the immigration system, making it more humane and functional.

  • The Presidential Proclamation 10052, the “nonimmigrant visa ban” on H-1, J-1, H-2B, and L workers, was passed by Trump in 2020 in response to the struggling US labor market as a result of COVID-19, and banned non-immigrant visas for individuals seeking to work temporarily in the US as an intern, trainee, teacher, camp counselor, au pair, or in a summer work travel program. Some immigration advocates were hopeful that Biden would rescind this policy immediately upon entering office, but it appears that he will wait to let it expire on March 31.

  • Amid the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, Biden must face the pressing issue of visas for temporary migrants, such as students. Currently, only 43 of 233 embassies and consulates are processing routine cases, and they are extremely backlogged, leaving international students struggling to obtain visas. If this problem is not addressed quickly, the number of international students is expected to continue to plummet in 2021, as it did in 2020.

  • On March 17, the House passed a pair of bills aimed to modernize the immigration system. The two bills are not as sweeping as Biden’s immigration package proposal, which would offer a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people, but rather a more piecemeal effort. The American Dream and Promise Act would create a process for the “DREAMers” — undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children — to earn permanent residency and eventually citizenship. The second bill, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, would allow agricultural workers to apply for temporary work visas, with the potential of eventually gaining permanent residency. Unfortunately, both of these bills face an uphill battle in the Senate, needing 10 Republicans to vote along with every Democrat in order to approve them.

While a complete overhaul of our broken immigration system may require a political miracle in the legislature, Biden and his administration have shown that they are prioritizing the issue of immigration. By using his first weeks in office and the powers of the executive to make many seemingly small, but very important, policy changes, Biden has begun the tedious work of undoing the past four years of inefficient and draconian immigration policy while laying the groundwork for deeper changes.