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Biden’s transition team is working on ways to reverse as much of Trump's cruel, inhumane, and in many cases, ILLEGAL immigration "reforms” as possible once Biden’s in office.
THREAD
THREAD
Most of what Trump did here involved policy memos, proclamations, EOs, and other executive measures, which is why Biden can undo them without the help of Congress. Here’s what he plans to do. 1/27
1: DACA. Trump tried several times to end DACA, and failed each time. However, he succeeded in blocking new applications for the program. Biden plans to fully restore DACA and protections for DREAMers in the U.S. 2/27
2: THE MUSLIM BANS. Trump’s first Muslim ban prompted me to create this account so I could explain what was happening at ports of entry. At the time (Jan. 2017), some ports were denying entry to everyone but U.S. citizens… 3/27
…some were operating on their last known guidance (admitting green-card holders and others as always), some were denying entry to temporary visa-holders and issuing “notices to appear” to green-card holders, and it was chaos. 4/27
Immigration lawyers camped out at many of the major airports to help people wrongly denied entry to the U.S., and nobody knew what was going on. Trump later tried other bans, and currently, we ban ppl from 13 predominantly Muslim countries. Biden will rescind these orders. 5/27
3: DEPORTATIONS. Trump has ICE arresting every undocumented immigrant they find. He also allows what are known as “collateral arrests,” which means that immigrants arrested during ICE operations but are not the targets of said operations are still taken into custody. 6/27
Under Obama, ICE prioritized deportation of undocumented immigrants with criminal convictions, who had illegally entered the country more than once, and who had illegally crossed the border. 7/27
Biden plans to put a 100-day freeze on deportations while his administration develops and issues detailed guidance on who ICE can arrest. 8/27
4: ASYLUM. Under Trump, people seeking asylum have received atrocious, inhumane treatment, all in the name of “deterring people” from coming here to seek asylum. 9/27
They were separated from their children, children were thrown in cages and forced to suffer horrific conditions, migrants were sent back across the border into some of the most dangerous parts of Mexico and missed their court dates, and more. 10/27
Trump also rammed through safe third-country agreements with El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala – the three countries from which most migrants are trying to escape. That gave him further latitude to reject asylum-seekers. 11/27
Biden plans to end Trump’s policy of forcing asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for their court dates. 12/27
He will also withdraw from the “safe third-country” agreements with three countries that are anything but safe. And he plans to reinstate an Obama-era program that allowed some at-risk children to reunite with family members already here in the U.S. 13/27
5: “PUBLIC CHARGE” RULES. Trump put rules into effect that denied permanent residency and immigrant visas to people that U.S. officials believed may use government services like Medicaid and Section 8 housing at some point. 14/27
Biden plans to address this, however, these rules were put in place through a regulatory process so ending them will take longer. 15/27
6: REFUGEES. Trump worked ridiculously hard to limit the number of refugees that come to the U.S. Right now, we only accept 15,000 per year. 16/27
Biden plans to raise that limit to 125,000 per year and grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to some Venezuelans exiled in the U.S. to protect them from deportation. 17/27
He will also review Trump’s efforts to end TPS protections for roughly 300k immigrants from Sudan, Nepal, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, and Honduras. 18/27
7: LOST CHILDREN. Under the Trump administration, we’ve lost track of the parents of many migrant children. Biden plans to create a task force that will work to locate these parents and reunite them with their children. 19/27
According to a Biden campaign spokesperson, keeping families together whenever and wherever possible is the core of Biden’s immigration policy. 20/27
8: UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT STATUS. Trump and his cultists don’t want a pathway to citizenship for any undocumented immigrant. That’s a massive part of why he’s been working so hard to deport as many as possible. 21/27
Biden will introduce legislation that will grant a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He does, however, face an uphill battle as this is something that we’ve been trying to do for 20 years and likely won’t work with a divided Congress. 22/27
PERSONAL OPINIONS: While I personally like what Biden’s working on, I think more needs to be done and I hope at least some of it happens. 23/27
Most notably, I think ICE and USCBP need to be rebuilt from the ground up around entirely new philosophies, same as I feel about police departments. Doing so is the only way to eliminate the entrenched cultures of power-hunger and abuse with which law enforcement is rife. 24/27
I also, sadly, think we need a compromise on a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. We have hardliners on both sides of the aisle, which is why we’ve spent 25 years not getting anything done on that front. 25/27
My idea for a compromise is this: Grant citizenship, but limit certain privileges (NOT Constitutional rights) that U.S. citizens enjoy. This is an extremely sensitive issue, though, so I’m open to ideas as to what acceptable limits are and what they could be. 26/27
Finally, our entire H-1 visa program needs to be overhauled. Right now, we have way too many loopholes in it that allow companies skirt the intent of those visas. That has to stop. I don’t want to end the program, but it does need to be fixed. /end
