President Biden plans to rescind the strict limits on legal immigration that former President Donald Trump said is necessary to protect American workers during the coronavirus-induced economic recession, according to a senior White House official.
Biden plans to sign an executive order rescinding the proclamation that suspended certain immigrant and work visas, Esther Olavarria told U.S. mayors over the weekend, according to a recording of the virtual meeting shared with CBS News. Olavarria is deputy director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council and one of the president’s top immigration advisers.
The next order, Olavarria said, “would rescind Trump’s proclamations that prevented the admission of immigrants and non-immigrants, whether it is considered a financial burden on our healthcare system or considered a risk to the US labor markets.”
“These were policies that ignored the decades, and indeed centuries, of contributions that immigrants made to our economy, our society, our culture,” said Olavarria during the 89th winter meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors. “Therefore, we would terminate these policies and return to a country that welcomes immigrants and recognizes their contributions.”
It is unclear when Biden plans to sign the proclamation, but his plans to issue several immigration actions on Friday were delayed. The White House did not comment.
Evan Vucci / AP
Olavarria’s comments represent the first indication of the Biden government’s view on visa limits. During the campaign and the transition, Mr. Biden did not address the policy, nor did his advisers commit to revoking it.
Less than a month before Biden took office, Mr. Trump ordered a three-month extension of the restrictions, which were first enacted in April 2020 as a ban on some potential immigrants and extended in June to also suspend several temporary work visas, such as the H-1B program.
Trump’s proclamation, which currently expires on March 31, prohibits the issuing of some immigrant visas to people who wish to move to the U.S. permanently through green card petitions submitted by their family members or potential employers.
Spouses and children with 21 or less American citizens are not subject to visa limits, which also exempt some health professionals who are fighting the pandemic, as well as wealthy immigrants who agree to invest more than $ 1 million in projects in the United States .
Trump’s proclamation also froze the diversity visa lottery, a program that allows people from underrepresented countries, many of them in Africa, to move to the U.S. In September, a federal judge ordered the government to issue visas to more than 9,000 immigrant candidates who won the lottery last year but are still barred from entering the United States according to the proclamation.
The restrictions also halted the issuance of several temporary visas used by people to work in the United States, including the H-1B program that is popular in the technology sector and H-2B visas for seasonal non-farm workers. J-1 cultural exchange visas for au pair and other temporary workers; visas for spouses of H-1B and H-2B carriers; and L visas for companies to relocate employees to the US were also restricted.
The government is currently barred from applying visa limits to workers sponsored by several large US companies because of a court decision in October.
Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute, said that Trump’s pandemic-era visa restrictions had “some staying power” because they were enacted for economic reasons. Although she believes the limits do not benefit US workers, Pierce predicted that lifting them will generate some resistance.
Convincing a segment of the US population that restrictions need to be lifted will not be an easy task, said Pierce, citing the current unemployment rate of 6.7%.
“The economic crisis is still here and it is a big problem for the United States,” Pierce told CBS News. “Biden is going to have to present the reasons why he thinks it is right to undo these proclamations, despite their supposed benefits for the United States economy.”
Pierce’s group estimates that more than 8,000 green card petitions were blocked between April and November 2020 due to Trump’s restrictions.
Olavarria said Biden will also terminate a proclamation issued by Trump in October 2019 to allow the government to reject visa applications from immigrants that he determines will not be able to pay for health insurance or cover medical expenses in the U.S.
According to a draft of the expected executive actions obtained by CBS News, Mr. Biden is planning to sign an additional directive instructing employees to review the “public prosecution” rules that allow consular and immigration officials to deny green cards and requests for Visa of candidates considered depend on, or are at risk of depending on, public assistance, such as food stamps.