Executive Orders on Steps to Reform Immigration System
Fact Sheet HERE
1. Family Reunification Task Force: Creates a task force to design and implement strategies, working with domestic and international partners, to find and reunite families that remain separated as a result of the Trump Administration’s border policies. The Task Force will report to the President and also make recommendations to avoid similar future policies.
Immigrant ARC Analysis:
President Biden has made clear he intends on spending time and energy on immigration, but this Task Force will report directly to the President, which puts this commitment into action (as opposed to the President Obama Administration, e.g., who waited to move on immigration and ultimately waited too long).
The Task Force faces monumental challenges. Advocates have been working around the clock to find parents who were deported before being reunited. Many of the families who have not been reunited yet is because of the complete lack of record-keeping by the Trump Administration and the challenges posed by finding individuals in places where they are in hiding or living in extremely remote areas.
Advocates have long been saying that there are families who will likely never be reunited.
2. Develop a strategy to address migration at the Southern Border: Announces plans to work with local, international, governmental, and NGO partners to find ways to address the situation at the Southern border, including addressing root causes and helping migrants stay in countries closer to home, and to reverse policies and executive orders that damaged the asylum system overall.
Immigrant ARC Analysis
Some of these announcements overlap with what was included in the legislative proposal, so it indicates that the Biden Administration is taking a multi-prong approach, hoping to push long-term change through legislation but willing to use Executive Orders or other Executive powers to move forward in the meantime.
This is the very beginning of the work that lies ahead. It restores the language and position we want to hear from the President, but it is going to take a very long time to enact steps that will have actual impact on individuals affected by the back-and-forth of the last many years.
Addressing push-factors: This is also included in the legislative proposal (with a funding ask) and signals a broad, multi-national approach that would also include the United Nations and other international partners.
Creating pathways for migrants to stay in countries “closer to home”: For the most part this means Mexico. Communities of Central American migrants have begun settling in Mexico, which encourages others to do the same, but pull factors aren’t as simple. Many are coming to the US to reunite with family who are already here. In addition, we’re seeing increased numbers of children arriving recently and COVID safety precautions are going to pose challenges and create complications across the Board.
Creating legal pathways for Central American migrants and asylum seekers: This is also included in the legislative proposal. The Obama Administration did in-country processing in limited ways and Biden will need to go much further.
Restoring the asylum system: The asylum process has been broken and to make meaningful reform will require legislative changes (such as eliminating the one-year filing deadline, which the legislative proposal includes). The asylum backlogs are astronomical and the Refugee Officer corps has been decimated. Undoing the regulations and policy changes, such as “Last In First Out” scheduling orders, are a good first step but this is one place where changes to the law need to happen, and happen quickly.
3. Restoring faith in the legal immigration system: Elevates role of the White House in setting immigration policy by re-establishing the Task Force for New Americans, orders a sweeping review of all of the rules and changes enacted by the Trump Administration, and specifically undoes Executive Orders that slowed down or disincentivized applications for legal immigration including the public charge rules and streamline the naturalization process.
Immigrant ARC Analysis
Clearly states that the issue is going to be run by the White House (as opposed to the Department of Homeland Security) and re-establishes a Task Force on New Americans, a group of leaders working within the White House as representatives of immigrant communities and advising the President on policies.
Orders a review of all the policy and regulations enacted over the last few years that have created barriers to immigration. This is a necessary first step but will take a long time and, in the meantime, it is not clear what will happen on the ground.
How long and difficult the road ahead is cannot be overstated enough. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which is the agency applicants for immigration benefits interact with the most, has been gutted. Funding, which comes from application fees and not from tax appropriations, has been diverted to enforcement, staff has left, customer service and stakeholder engagement has not happened in a meaningful way and mechanisms to communicate with the public have been either eliminated or rendered ineffective. Processing backlogs are immense, even for applications that are not subject to quotas.
The specific language around reviewing and rescinding policies related to public charge determinations is key as this was an attack specifically on poor immigrants and has intersected with COVID Pandemic responses in a dramatic way. The outcome of several currently pending law suits regarding public charge will be affected by the language of this Executive Order.
Streamlining the naturalization process will help fix the process of obtaining citizenship. In 2016, the wait time for citizenship was just over five months but USCIS reports that the processing time in New York City is now 16-21.5 months -- three or four times what it was in 2016. It is unclear whether they will address questionable denials of waivers of the civics exam for citizenship for those with documented impairments.
Experts who weighed in:
Camille Mackler (Immigrant ARC)
Hasan Shafiqullah (Legal Aid Society)
Rex Chen (Legal Services NYC)