President Joe Biden partially lifted a Trump-era ban that severely reduced legal immigration in the midst of the pandemic, saying it has separated families and harms U.S. industries that depend on international talent.
Family members of American citizens and green card holders will now be able to immigrate to the United States, a phenomenon that former President Donald Trump previously criticized as “chain migration”. The same will happen with individuals who have been selected to receive visas through the diversity visa lottery, which allows the United States to accept 55,000 immigrants annually from countries with historically low levels of immigration and was the subject of Trump’s infamous speech on “countries of Shit”.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates that restrictions on these immigrants prevented 26,000 people of getting green cards monthly since last April, when Trump implemented the ban.
However, many foreign workers applying for temporary visas are still prohibited from entering the United States until at least March 31, when the existing ban is due to expire, unless Biden decides to renew it.
This includes skilled workers applying the much sought after H-1B visa, on which the technology industry has come to depend, and their spouses applying for H-4 visas as their dependents. Foreigners who transfer to the US offices of their multinational companies via L visas, including business executives, and some academics and people who participate in cultural exchanges and work on J-1 visas are also prohibited.
It is unclear when Biden will lift visa restrictions, which Trump saw as a threat to domestic workers who were laid off in the middle of the pandemic. Although Trump administration officials argued at the time that the ban would save 525,000 American jobs, most of the layoffs ended up in sectors that do not employ a significant number of foreign visa workers, suggesting that the ban did little to reduce unemployment and could have hurt companies that employ Americans and non-citizens.
The ban has always excluded immigrants who are already in the US, holders of existing visas, temporary workers in food production industries and healthcare workers, and researchers fighting Covid-19.
In a proclamation late on Wednesday, Biden said the ban “does not promote the interests of the United States”.
“On the contrary, it harms the United States, including by preventing some family members of United States citizens and legal permanent residents from joining their families here,” he wrote. “It also hurts industries in the United States that use talent from around the world.”
Revoking the ban is just the first step: the Biden government will now have to deal with the massive backlog of visa applications that accumulated while the ban was in place. This includes some 473,000 visa applicants that were sponsored by family members in the USA.
Affected people’s lawyers say they will continue to challenge the remaining provisions of the ban affecting foreign workers in court. Last year, a federal judge exempted 181 families from the ban that proved to be harmed by it, including children who would have become ineligible for the green card after turning 21, while the ban was still in effect.
In addition to facing pressure to revoke the visa ban, Biden is also under pressure to revoke a Trump-era policy that continues to allow the U.S. to refuse the vast majority of asylum seekers arriving at the southern border for reasons related to the pandemic. He could do this by issuing a similar unilateral proclamation.