- The Biden government has said it will offer visas to people whose entry is denied due to Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban”.
- But the government is not granting entry to anyone who has obtained a “diversity visa”.
- Thousands of these visas are issued each year to members of underrepresented groups.
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The last government’s ban on traveling from several Muslim-majority nations was “morally wrong”, in the words of President Joe Biden. But the new administration is denying entry to thousands of people who have been affected by it.
Biden, shortly after taking office, rescinded the so-called “Muslim ban”. And this week, his government announced that most of those denied entry to the United States because of this could apply for a visa again.
But the White House left out a significant group: thousands of people who were selected to receive “diversity visas” – intended, as the name suggests, to encourage the migration of underrepresented people – only to be removed by an executive order. of Donald Trump, who then tried to eliminate the diversity program altogether.
People like Anwar al Saeedi, a Yemeni man who in 2017 hoped to move to the United States with his wife and two young children.
“It was a big dream for me to be able to move my children to America to live in a respectable country that respects human rights and where it is possible to live safely,” he told NPR earlier this year. He is instead living in the African country of Djibouti, where he traveled with his family, spending thousands of dollars on interviews to obtain his visa (the United States embassy in Yemen was closed in the middle of years of war).
“It is disheartening and disappointing,” Abed Ayoub, the legal and policy director for the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, told Insider. The committee represents people like Anwar, who have made plans for a new life, only to be denied.
“These individuals are worse off now,” said Ayoub, “because this government, regardless of whether it’s Biden or Trump, made a promise to them and they acted accordingly.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, one of several groups that challenged Trump’s travel ban, considered the new government’s decision a shame.
“President Biden just dusted Trump’s ‘CLOSED’ sign and locked the door behind him,” ACLU lawyer Manar Waheed said in a statement. “This decision threatens to permanently prevent thousands of black and brown immigrants who meet all legal requirements to immigrate to the United States, perpetuating the effects of discriminatory prohibition.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why it excluded diversity visa recipients from its reversal of the Muslim ban.
But one reason may be the law: the US Department of State is limited to issuing 55,000 diversity visas a year, with a specific number reserved for various parts of the world. According to Reuters, State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Monday that the statute authorizing the program also requires candidates to demonstrate their qualifications in the same fiscal year in which they were chosen.
Ayoub thinks this is a kind of excuse. His group had pressured the government to circumvent any legal issue by granting “humanitarian probation” to those who still suffered from a travel ban. Such parole may be granted, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, to someone “who would otherwise be inadmissible in the United States for a temporary period due to an emergency”.
From there, a more permanent solution could be worked out. Ayoub said the goal now is legislation that would allow those on humanitarian probation to apply for asylum or some other legal status of residence permit once they are here.
“But we need the government and Congress to be on the same page,” he said. “If you call the Muslim ban discriminatory, and you call it a blemish, then you must correct what has been done.”
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