President Joe Biden has partially lifted a Trump-era ban that severely curtailed legal immigration during the pandemic, saying it separated families and harmed American industries that rely on international talent.
Relatives of US citizens and green card holders will now be able to emigrate to the US, a phenomenon former President Donald Trump previously denounced as “chain migration.” That includes individuals selected to receive visas through the Diversity Visa Lottery, which allows the US to accept 55,000 immigrants annually from countries with historically low immigration levels and has been the subject of Trump’s infamous “shithole countries.”
The Migration Policy Institute estimates that the restrictions for those immigrants are approximate 26,000 people since April, when Trump enacted the ban on getting green cards every month.
However, many foreign workers applying for a temporary visa are still not allowed to enter the US until at least March 31, when the existing ban is scheduled to expire unless Biden decides to renew it.
That includes skilled workers applying for the sought-after H-1B visa, which the tech industry has come to rely on, and their spouses applying for H-4 visas as their family members. Foreigners transferring to the US offices of their multinational corporations via L visas, including business executives, and some scientists and people participating in cultural and work exchanges on J-1 visas are also still banned.
It’s not clear when Biden will lift restrictions on those visa applicants, which Trump saw as a threat to domestic workers fired during the pandemic. While Trump officials claimed at the time that the ban would save 525,000 U.S. jobs, most of the layoffs eventually took place in industries that do not employ a significant number of foreign workers who receive visas, suggesting that the ban has done little to lower labor unemployment and could have harmed companies employing both Americans and non-citizens.
The ban has always excluded immigrants already in the US, existing visa holders, temporary workers in the food manufacturing industry, and health workers and researchers fighting Covid-19.
In a proclamation Wednesday evening, Biden said the ban “does not advance the interests of the United States.”
“On the contrary, it harms the United States, including by preventing certain relatives of US citizens and lawful permanent residents from joining their families here,” he wrote. “It also harms industries in the United States that use talent from around the world.”
The repeal of the ban is just the first step: Biden’s administration will now have to address the significant backlog of visa applications that have built up during the ban. That includes some 473,000 visa applicants sponsored by family members in the US.
Lawyers of those affected say they do continue to challenge the rest of the prohibition foreign workers in court. Last year, a federal judge exempted 181 families from the ban who had proven they had been harmed by it, including children who would not qualify for green cards after they turned 21 while the ban was still in effect.
In addition to pressure to revoke the visa ban, Biden is also forced to revoke a Trump-era policy that still allows the US to banish the vast majority of asylum seekers arriving at the southern border on pandemic grounds To point out. He could do this by issuing a similar, unilateral declaration.