Immigration experts were not wrong when they warned that President Donald Trump would use until the last moment to make changes to immigration rules, since five days before leaving the White House a new rule will come into force that will allow the courts to speed up deportations.
This is one of the Most controversial changes of the Department of Justice ( DOJ ), published in the Federal Register, which are will apply from 06, with the possibility of reverse even appeals .
During your campaign, the president-elect Joe Biden put on the table an ambitious immigration agenda that includes the path to citizenship for more than 11 million of undocumented, the same benefit for the ‘dreamers’, as well as undoing the policies cases of President Trump that have affected foreign workers and students, among other groups.
In an interview on the occasion of his book I was once you , the renowned journalist Maria Hinojosa explained to this newspaper that immigrants have always faced inequality in the US, but with the government of President Trump, the Actions against him resulted in “human rights violations.”
Families requesting asylum are the ones that have suffered the most from these Republican policies with the separation of children from their parents in 2018. To date more than 600 minors have not been able to be reunited with their parents.
In addition to this, more than 60, 000 Asylum seekers were “deported” to Mexico, in a policy known as “Remain in Mexico” , pending their hearings in immigration courts in the US Most, according to reports from activists and lawyers, will not be able to return to the country, except for those who have legal defense.
President-elect Biden has defended his agenda, but had to recognize that it will not be easy to implement it. That will be your first broken campaign promise. He said that at the end of “Day 1” of his administration, the program would be finished, but last week he acknowledged that it will take months.
“The schedule is to do it so that, in fact, we do it better and not worse” , Biden said. “I will do what I said. It will be needed, not on day 1, it will probably take the next six months to implement it. ”
Just like that promise, others on immigration issues will take time to be reversed or wait for approval of Congress, before the end of 2022, when the Democratic majority in the House could return to in danger, after losing 11 seats last 3 November.
Three levels of reforms
There are at least three ways to implement migratory changes. Congress is the only institution that can make substantive changes, redirect the entire system, but even without the help of legislators, President Trump managed to implement more than 400 adjustments in accordance with his conservative project, according to a report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).
The immigration attorney, Dr. Nelson Castillo , from Immigration Hoy, explained that a president can promote laws, implement executive orders or apply new interpretations to current immigration laws under the administrative process published in the Registry Federal, as happened with the rule with which this article begins.
“Of course, we are going to see all the immigration proposals that Mr. Biden has In fact, which ones will it realistically be able to implement ”, Dr. Castillo said. “One of the easiest is any executive action that President Trump has taken can be reversed by another executive action by President Biden, it can be carried out immediately.”
In his In the first four months of administration, President Trump implemented several executive orders that required actions from the Department of Homeland Security ( DHS ) and the Department of State on immigration matters.
For example, to justify the border wall and allocate greater funds to the border, as well as modifications to the asylum and refugee system, the president signed the order 13767 “Improvements in border security and immigration control.”
The increase in raids against undocumented persons found its justification in the order 13768 “Improving public safety in the interior of the United States”, while greater scrutiny in customs was based on the order 13769 “Protect the nation from the entry of foreign terrorists to the United States. ”
One of the most significant actions of President Trump, which allowed him to redefine the immigration system without the help of Congress, was the order 13788 “Buy American and hire Americans”, since it promoted modifications to regulations of different work and student visas.
“There are executive actions and regulations on how to implement existing laws, that many of them have gone through a scrutiny process that have notified the public; they integrate the comments, and then it is implemented ”, indicated Dr. Castillo.
Priorities
The government of the president-elect will face a complex challenge on migration issues, but there are three priorities that experts and activists have put on the table: protect the ‘dreamers’, strengthen the agricultural workforce and ensure the legal status of the undocumented population.
Alejandro Mayorkas , nominated by Biden as Secretary of Homeland Security, recognized the importance and challenge that “fix the broken immigration system” .
“Our immigration system is broken and we all know it, the cost of that broken system is incalculably high, preventing not only families from a better life, but also the country of prosperity “, he said in the virtual forum organized by the Business Immigration Coalition. al Americana (ABIC, for its acronym in English).
He added that attention should be paid to workers of all kinds, from agricultural to those specialized in technology.
“President-elect Joe Biden is committed to fixing this broken immigration system,” Mayorkas said.
The Democratic Division
Dr. Castillo acknowledges that much of the fund plans will depend on Congress .
“In January we will see what will happen with the Senate, if it continues divided … things may not progress” , stated in reference to the special election in Georgia that could give a majority to Democrats or Republicans.
The best scenario is that the Democrats manage to control the Senate, but it does not guarantee that between them they agree on the moment of deciding on immigration matters.
“There is a great diversity of thought on immigration matters, from which it says Let’s not open the border … or that there should be no Border patrol … until the other end of closing the border, “he said. “Even with the Democrats having control of the House, nothing guarantees you that there will be an immigration reform, although obviously one has more expectations.”
The immigration lawyer, who operates in California, recalled that in the eighties the president Ronald Reagan endorsed what, until now, has been the most advanced immigration reform.
“If you see, the legalization that occurred in the 1980s occurred with a Republican administration, with President Reagan ”, he recalled. “Both political parties, in one way or another, have built the current immigration code that we have.”