“A new poll conducted January 29 to February 1 by Vox and Data for Progress (DFP) found that a majority of 1,124 likely voters and an overwhelming proportion of Democrats “strongly” or “somewhat” supported offering a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants broadly (69 percent and 86 percent, respectively). That support jumps to 72 percent of likely voters and 87 percent of Democrats if you ask them specifically about “DREAMers” who were brought to the US as children. Those findings are consistent with other recent surveys on legalization, including one conducted by Pew in June 2020.
As part of his proposal for comprehensive immigration reform, President Joe Biden has called for creating an eight-year earned path to citizenship for immigrants who were present in the US on or before January 1, 2021, and can pass a background check and pay taxes.
However, it is unlikely to survive in its current form given that it would have to attract 10 Republican votes to proceed in the Senate — where some members have already decried it as “mass amnesty” and criticized its lack of border security provisions — unless Democrats can eliminate the filibuster. While Republicans’ declarations don’t generally reflect American attitudes about legalizing undocumented immigrants, polling has shown that the public does favor certain measures to increase border security, including upping the number of border agents.
Piecemeal legislation to legalize at least some groups of undocumented immigrants might have a better chance at passing.”
“the current wave of migration at the southern border is the result of a humanitarian crisis in Central America that has been years in the making.
Citizens of the “Northern Triangle” region — Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — have long suffered from gang-related violence, frequent extortion, government corruption, and high levels of poverty. Over the past few months, though, another factor has added an additional push to make the dangerous journey north: continuing devastation from back-to-back hurricanes.
Hurricanes Eta and Iota, both super-powerful Category 4 hurricanes, made landfall in November 2020 within a two-week span, ripping through Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala. The storms brought torrential rain and resulting flash flooding and landslides. They left more than 200 people dead and another 5.3 million people in need of assistance, including more than 1.8 million children, according to Unicef’s estimates. Many families lost their homes, their belongings, and access to water and livelihoods.
The hurricanes delivered yet another shock to a region that already experienced the highest levels of violence and poverty in the world and was facing an economic downturn from the Covid-19 pandemic.”
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“In the four months since the hurricanes, recovery has been slow. Most families have left official shelters to return to their communities where rehabilitation work has started but living conditions and access to services and income have heavily deteriorated. More families continue to be pushed into poverty and, absent urgent action, more children are likely to become malnourished and drop out of school. Agricultural communities hit by the storm are also only beginning to see the impacts of last season’s crop failures.
All of this, experts say, is helping push migrants out of their home countries and toward the US.”
“Biden’s critics say his messaging is squarely to blame for the thousands of migrants coming now: But more than half a dozen asylum-seekers interviewed by POLITICO said they would make the trek regardless of who was in the White House. Some of their reasons: lack of job opportunities, concern for the safety of their family and devastation from last year’s back-to-back hurricanes that walloped parts of Central America.
For Reyes, the decision came after she received threats that Meylin and Freddy would be kidnapped and killed if she didn’t pay a fee to keep them safe. She said she knew the threats were real because her husband’s friend recently was kidnapped, tortured and killed even though his family paid the ransom. (Reyes did not discuss her husband’s whereabouts.)”
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“It’s also clear that the number of migrants crossing — including unaccompanied minors — has increased sharply with the start of the Biden administration.”
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“This isn’t the first surge of migrants arriving at the border. It happened in 2019 under Trump. It also happened in 2014 under former President Barack Obama.”
“The door to the U.S. has been shut tight to asylum seekers since last March, about the time when Janiana first arrived in Tijuana, when the Trump administration issued an order at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic that every migrant — child or adult — would be immediately “expelled” back to Mexico or their home country if they attempted to cross the border, without even a chance to make a case that the persecution they face qualifies them to stay. After he took office this year, Joe Biden kept the policy largely in place, but began to admit unaccompanied minors even while continuing to expel both adults and children who enter with families. Since the shift in policy, some parents and guardians have made the devastating decision, calculated only out of desperation, to send their children off ahead of them, alone, to cross the border.
The result is a new form of family separation — but instead of happening at the hands of federal agents in American government facilities, it’s taking place, family by family, in camps like the one Janiana lives in. The fact that minors won’t be expelled like everyone else has rapidly spread by word of mouth across the length of the border. And while many families choose to stick together, the pressure to separate weighs heaviest on the most vulnerable — families who fear death, whether from persecutors who have followed them to the border, or from extreme hunger.
For Janiana, the possibility of being sent back to Honduras reads as a death sentence. She shows me the scars from her torture at the hands of a powerful gang back home that her family got on the wrong side of. Fearing further reprisals, Janiana fled with her sister’s children”
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“When the Trump administration implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols — better known as the “Remain in Mexico” program — in December 2018 to force asylum seekers to wait for their hearings outside of the U.S., the policy exempted unaccompanied minors, and many parents released to Mexico with their children made the same decision migrant families are making today: to send their children to cross the border alone so they at least could wait in the U.S.
Then the pandemic hit. In March 2020, the White House strong-armed the Centers for Disease Control to invoke an obscure public health order, Title 42, which gives the executive the power to close the border in a time of health emergency. Citing Covid-19, the U.S. began to immediately turn away thousands of people who would normally be able to make their asylum cases in court — including unaccompanied children.”
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“The White House has, as its spokesperson indicated, repeatedly told migrants that “now is not the time to come.” But for would-be asylees like Janiana, the act of leaving home to travel thousands of miles northward in a perilous journey in search of safety isn’t something they can just delay for a more convenient time in the calendar. And, like her, many didn’t leave recently. They’ve been waiting at the border for months.”
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“In Tijuana, Janiana says she’s grappled seriously with the idea of separating from her niece’s son. (Her niece, who is too old to be considered a minor, wasn’t available to comment for this story.)
“It is a truly heartbreaking choice to make,” she says, as tears start to well in her eyes. “After everything they have gone through with me. We have gone days without food, together.” On a bus ride to Tijuana, she says the baby went three days without anything to eat or drink besides flour tortillas and bottled water that a kind Cuban migrant shared with them. Sometimes, when she’s feeling at her lowest, Janiana says she has been most tempted to send the baby to cross the border alone, but she remains resolute for now that they must remain together. However, she can understand how others have made the decision already.”
“The US will offer temporary legal protection to an estimated 320,000 Venezuelans who came to the US after fleeing the brutal dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, fulfilling one of President Joe Biden’s campaign promises.
A senior Biden administration official said Monday that Venezuelans currently residing in the US will be able to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is typically conferred on citizens of countries suffering from natural disasters, armed conflict, or other extraordinary circumstances.
For an 18-month period, it will allow Venezuelans who pass security and background checks to continue to live in the US free of fear of deportation, and to obtain work permits. Those who arrive after March 8, however, will not be eligible.”
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“Former President Donald Trump previously offered Venezuelans in the US the opportunity to apply for another kind of humanitarian protection called “Deferred Enforced Departure,” shielding them from deportation and allowing them to apply for work permits for a period of 18 months starting in January. Biden’s decision to also extend TPS status to Venezuelans gives them another way to seek protection.”
“Administration officials have urged patience as they review the dysfunctional system under which migrants are currently processed at the border, and as they seek to dismantle former President Donald Trump’s complex web of policies that put asylum and other humanitarian protections out of reach for most people. For now, that means that the vast majority of migrants are still being turned away.
Though the White House has declined so far to call it a “crisis,” the situation is increasingly dire: As of Wednesday, more than 3,700 children were reportedly being detained in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) temporary holding facilities designed for adults for longer than legally permitted — a record high. These are the same facilities that generated widespread outrage under the Trump administration, where children slept with nothing but mylar blankets to keep them warm at night on concrete floors.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Saturday that a CBP facility is “no place for a child,” but that border agents are “working around the clock in difficult circumstances to take care of children temporarily in our care.”
CBP officials are struggling to quickly transfer them to state-licensed shelters for migrant children, which have had to drastically slash their capacity amid the pandemic, and where beds are now full. That has forced the administration to reopen temporary tent facilities in Carrizo Springs, Texas, which are costly and not subject to the same level of oversight as permanent shelters.
On Saturday, the administration also announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would help “receive, shelter and transfer” unaccompanied children over the next 90 days. The agency is now working to expand the capacity of shelters designed to administer care to children.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same crisis has been playing out cyclically since at least 2014, when the US saw a dramatic shift in the kinds of migrants who were arriving at the southern border, from primarily single-adult Mexicans to families and children from Central America’s “Northern Triangle”: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
In the years since, the federal government has failed to adapt to ensure that children and families are treated humanely. That burden is now on Biden.”
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“While most migrants are still being turned away at the border, the Biden administration began accepting unaccompanied children in February in a reversal of Trump-era policy. Most of them have been stranded in Mexico for a year under that policy, despite their right to seek protection under federal law, and are now seeking to reunify with family in the US.
Since 2014, the number of unaccompanied children arriving at the southern border has remained above 40,000 annually, peaking at more than 72,000 in 2019 under Trump.”
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“The administration also announced Wednesday that, in an effort to reduce the pressure on resources at the border, it is restarting the Central American Minors program, which allows children in danger to apply to come to the US from their home countries instead of having to come to the US-Mexico border to do so. Trump had ended the program after taking office, leaving around 3,000 children stranded who had already been approved for travel.”
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“Biden has kept in place a Trump-era policy that has allowed the US to expel nearly all migrants arriving on the southern border with no due process on the grounds of curbing the spread of Covid-19.”
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“Biden has created narrow exceptions to the policy for unaccompanied children and asylum seekers who were sent back to Mexico to await their day in court in the US under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols. Last month, Mexico also stopped accepting some families with children under the age of 12 due to a change in its laws concerning the detention of children, so they have been released into the US instead.
But the vast majority of migrants still can’t enter the US under the policy.”
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“the Biden administration’s message to migrants is, “The border is not open,” and “Do not come in an irregular fashion.” But there is hope among migrant communities in Mexico that the new administration will eventually offer them protection given that Biden has sought to pursue more immigrant-friendly policies than his predecessor.”
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“Smugglers have also been spreading misinformation about the Biden administration’s plans to process asylum seekers in an effort to profit from it.”
“Current law caps the number of employment-based green cards that can be granted each year at 40,000. That is far fewer than the demand for green cards in that category. Making matters worse, nationals from any one country can be granted only 7 percent of the total.
As a result of that rule, a very small share of high-skilled professionals from India and China are able to land green cards even when their petitions have been approved. These two countries send America the bulk of our imported high-skilled talent, typically on H-1B visas. Meanwhile, the green card quotas for countries that don’t send much high-skilled talent to the U.S. go unfilled.
The upshot is that an estimated 800,000 immigrants who are working legally in the United States are waiting for green cards, an unprecedented backlog in employment-based immigration. The vast majority are Indians; Chinese are the next biggest category.
An Indian national who applies for a green card now might wait 50 years (or more) to get one. Under current policy, the Cato Institute’s David Bier estimates, 200,000 Indians will die of old age while waiting for green cards. The children of such workers qualify for dependent visas until they turn 21, at which point they become “legal Dreamers”—people who have grown up in this country but can’t qualify for permanent residence.”
“Trump reshaped virtually every part of the U.S. immigration system through executive action, policy guidance and regulatory change.
In total, he made more than 400 changes to immigration policy in the last four years, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank. The Immigration Policy Tracking Project, run by former Obama Homeland Security official, Lucas Guttentag, puts that number closer to 1,000.
Biden has made fighting the coronavirus, which is still infecting tens of thousands and killing 2,000 Americans each day, his top priority. After he helps bring the pandemic under control, he plans to tackle several issues, including the economy, infrastructure, gun restrictions and immigration.
In addition to Trump’s changes, the circumstances surrounding immigration on the ground have changed, making it impossible for Biden to try to just return to pre-2016 policies.”
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” On his first day in office, Biden released a massive immigration package and signed several immigration-related executive orders to halt construction of the border wall, end a ban from some majority-Muslim nations and restart a program to protect so-called Dreamers.”
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“But Biden has yet to address a series of issues: He punted on whether high-skilled workers should be given preference if they are being hired at companies paying more money instead of through a random lottery. He hasn’t fulfilled a campaign promise to tackle the massive backlog at immigration courts that doubled under Trump. (Even with the backlog, many of those cases were denied.)
And last month, he called for a review of the so-called public charge rule that makes it harder for immigrants who rely on public benefits, such as Medicaid, to obtain permanent residency in the country.”
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“Biden will be forced to make decisions on some issues, including the closure of the southern border and granting visas to more than 100,000 foreign workers. But it’s not clear when — or if — he will act at all on others, including fighting court cases and changing the refugee caps.”
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“One of the most pressing issues Biden faces: to allow temporary migrants, such as students, easier access to visas, even though many consulates and embassies are closed. Only 43 of 233 processing centers for guests are processing routine cases, according to the State Department.”
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“Before Trump came into office, nearly 500,000 new foreign students came into the United States in a year, pumping billions of dollars into small and large schools across the country. That number slowly declined under the former president and plummeted last year.
Julie Stufft, acting deputy assistant secretary for visa services, acknowledged the problems in securing visas last week. She said her office is working to solve the problem, though those who plan to reside in the U.S. permanently take precedent. Some immigrants from select countries, including China and much of Europe, are still banned from traveling to the U.S. due to the pandemic.
Gregory Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the Biden administration deserves credit for pursuing many of the reforms he had pledged to do during the campaign. But, Chen said, “The jury is still out on whether they are going to be successful in implementing those policies.””
“Last year, citing the pandemic, the White House strong-armed the Centers for Disease Control to invoke Title 42, an order that closes the border in times of emergency. Though for many classes of people the border has remained totally porous —businesspeople, vacationers and even many immigrants have crossed it freely for most of the pandemic — asylum seekers and refugees have been blocked. In the months since, a record-low number of refugees have been resettled, and just about every asylum seeker arriving on the southern border, except for some unaccompanied children, has been turned away or summarily deported.
While Biden has started to reopen those processes — people in refugee camps in Mexico as part of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” plan have begun to enter the U.S. to make their cases for asylum — there are reasons to believe that on this front, Trump’s presidency will have a much longer-lasting effect. While Trump and Miller attacked immigration in all its forms, no would-be immigrants received more attention or provoked more action than refugees. And in turning asylum seekers into political ammunition in the American fight over immigration — conflating them with illegal border-crossers — Trump broke a fragile but powerful consensus that had lasted through Republican and Democratic presidents and had kept America open as a nation of refuge for more than a generation.
Biden may yet repeal Title 42, the order closing the door to refugees and asylum seekers, though the White House has said it will remain in place while it figures out how to implement an improved processing system. But that order was not the only way Trump damaged the system. He was the first major party candidate to run on an explicitly anti-refugee platform. And he continued to wage a campaign unapologetically against asylum seekers after taking office, putting through a barrage of rule changes, regulations and legal decisions that hobbled the system before he shut it down altogether in the pandemic.”
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“Since Trump mainly used executive action — circumventing Congress — to change policy, it may not be hard for Biden to reopen the U.S. to refugees and asylum seekers over the next four years. But in the longer term, closing the political divide that Trump widened on asylum will prove much more challenging. Thanks to the last administration, asylum in the U.S., once globally reliable, has become like the carpeting in the Oval Office: something that can be torn up and remade from president to president.”