U.S. Immigration Policy Changes Expected Under Biden

“The Supreme Court had already ordered USCIS to begin processing DACA applications again, but they have not done so. The new administration should be able to reopen the application process; however, a legislative solution is needed to truly offer permanent protection to that group of people who arrived in the U.S. as young children,” Waslin said.

Public Charge
According to a report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), reversing the USCIS’s public-charge regulation will require more than the stroke of a pen. The agency likely would have to go through a notice and public comment period.

The public charge rule, or the wealth test, as critics call it, seeks to determine whether an immigrant is likely to rely on America’s public assistance programs. Although the rule is not a new concept and has been on the books for more than 20 years, the Trump administration is making actual use of it far more than its predecessors did.

Biden has also vowed to send Congress legislation to provide legal status to many undocumented immigrants in the country.

“Yet seeking congressional action on one of the most contentious immigration issues would inevitably be a challenging first step for the new administration, even as public support for immigration overall has risen to the highest recorded,” MPI reports.

Refugee Program
The United States has for years taken in tens of thousands of refugees, but under the Trump administration, admissions have reached a record low.

Biden is expected to raise the refugee cap for fiscal 2021, which the Trump administration set at 15,000. During the campaign, Biden pledged a refugee admissions ceiling of 125,000.

Dramatic cuts to refugee admissions have hit the network of nonprofit agencies that do the work of refugee resettlement hard. Resettlement capacity has decreased nearly 40 percent since FY 2017,” MPI noted, adding that, before leaving office, former President Barack Obama set the number at 110,000.

MPP and Asylum Rules
Trump’s oft-repeated pledge to halt illegal immigration and get control of America’s southern border spawned an array of policies and regulations that narrowed access to humanitarian protections for migrants.

They included Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as the Remain in Mexico policy, which forced thousands of migrants to stay in Mexican border cities while awaiting immigration court hearings in the United States. The administration also restricted asylum for immigrants who traveled through Central American countries if they failed to apply for protection in a transit nation before arriving at a U.S. port of entry.

Undoing the MPP and reinstating asylum protection will be the most difficult, experts predict.

“I believe the Trump administration’s actions toward refugees, asylees and others seeking humanitarian assistance will be felt for a very long time,” Waslin said. “It will take a while for the U.S. to reassert its leadership and provide the assistance it can to people suffering around the world.”

The Trump administration has defended MPP as preventing overcrowding in U.S. migrant detention facilities.

Aline Barros is Immigration Reporter for VOA News.This article is published courtesy of the Voice of America (VOA).