President Joe Biden has now reversed a number of Trump-era immigration policies. Photo / AP
The Biden administration is preparing to notify the US Congress that it will dramatically increase US admissions of refugees.
Officials and people familiar with the matter say Biden plans to announce this week that he will increase the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the country to more than eight times the level at which the Trump administration left it.
Former President Donald Trump had drastically reduced the refugee admissions cap to only 15,000 before he left office. Biden's plan would raise that number to 125,000, an increase of 10,000 over the high ceiling set by former President Barack Obama before he left office.
The officials and others, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement, said Biden will make his plan public during a visit to the State Department on Thursday (Friday NZT).
Biden may also address asylum claims for residents of Hong Kong there, according to one official. They said Biden would not necessarily override the record low cap of 15,000 that Trump set for the current budget year. Instead, the 125,000 figure would be proposed for the budget year beginning October 1.
The President is required by law to first consult Congress on his plans before making a determination. Advocates have said that the backlog of tens of thousands of cases by the Trump administration make it unlikely Biden's target of resettling 125,000 refugees can be reached this year. It will take time to rebuild the pipeline.
More than one-third of US resettlement offices were forced to close over the past four years with the drop in refugee arrivals and hundreds of workers were let go. Another issue that may be addressed is a review of vetting procedures, according to the officials and others.
The Trump administration had put in place extreme background checks that had brought the programme to a standstill, advocates say. The Trump administration also narrowed eligibility this year, restricting which refugees are selected for resettlement to certain categories, including people persecuted because of religion and Iraqis whose assistance to the US put them in danger.
The Biden administration is expected to do away with those categories at some point and have the programme return to using the long-standing referral system by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that makes selections based on a person's need to be resettled.
Biden's other orders on family separation, border security and legal immigration bring to nine the number of executive actions on immigration during his first two weeks in office. With proposed legislation to give legal status and a path to citizenship to all of the estimated 11 million people in the country who don't have it, Biden has quickly taken aim at many of Trump's attempts to deter immigration, both legal and illegal.
Alejandro Mayorkas, who was sworn in as Homeland Security secretary after his nomination was confirmed Tuesday by the Senate, will lead a task force on family separation, focused largely on reuniting parents and children who remain apart. It is unclear exactly how many, but about 5500 children have been identified in court documents as having been separated during Trump's presidency, including about 600 whose parents have yet to be found by a court-appointed committee.
A review of border security will include a policy that makes asylum-seekers wait in Mexican border cities for hearings in US immigration court. It is a step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge to end the "Remain in Mexico" policy, known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols, which enrolled nearly 70,000 asylum-seekers since it began in January 2019. Biden asked for "a phased strategy for the safe and orderly entry into the United States" of those already enrolled who are waiting in Mexico for a judge to decide their cases.
Pro-immigration groups largely applauded Biden's latest moves, though they were more muted than the almost-giddy reception to the President's first-day actions. "The positive steps the administration is taking must be the beginning, not an end unto themselves," Ali Noorani, president of the National Immigration Forum, said Tuesday. "Congress should build on these first steps to find permanent solutions to improve our immigration system."