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ResourcesVisa & Immigration LawUS Immigration LawUS Visas Thailand: Review of the Public Charge Rule

US Visas Thailand: Review of the Public Charge Rule

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Public Charge rule. For those who are unaware, this is a rule regarding a sponsor's ability to support an Immigrant to the United States. We are going to talk about this more from the context of Fiancé and Marriage Visas but I am going to be quoting from an Executive Order signed by newly inaugurated President Biden. 

Executive Order on Restoring Faith in our Legal Immigration Systems and Strengthening Integration and Inclusion Efforts for New Americans. Quoting directly and this is from whitehouse.gov from section 4. "Immediate review of agency actions on public charge inadmissibility, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the heads of other relevant agencies as appropriate, shall review all agency actions related to implementation of the public charge grounds of inadmissibility in Section 212 (a)(4) of the Immigration Nationality Act and related grounds of deportability in section 237(a)(5) of the INA, 8 U.S.C 1227(a)(5). They shall in considering the effects and implications of public charge policies, consult with the heads of relevant agencies including the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. This review should consider and evaluate the current effects of these agency actions and the implications of their continued implementation in light of the policies set forth in Section 1 of this order." We will get to that in a minute. "Identify appropriate agency actions if any to address the concerns about the current Public Health charge policies' effect on the integrity of the nation's Immigration system and public health and recommend steps that relevant agencies should take to clearly communicate current public charge policies and proposed changes if any, to reduce fear and confusion among impacted communities. Within 60 days of the date of this order the Secretary of State, Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall each submit a report to the President describing any agency actions identified pursuant to subsection (a)(ii) of this section and any steps their agencies intend to take or have taken consistent with subsection (a)(iii) of this section."

They quote and they go into the preamble if you will of this overall order which basically said, and I am definitely paraphrasing, "we need to do a reassessment of everything basically that has happened in the last 4 years and take note and try to basically make policies for lack of a better term, that are more fair and equitable to intending immigrants". Again, I am greatly paraphrasing that and I don't mean to. It is mostly for expedience so that we can make this video a little bit more easy to digest.

But long story short, the effect of this is they want to review the Public Charge rule. The public charge rule got changed by the last Administration and frankly the thresholds were raised tremendously. We definitely saw this in a lot of adjustment cases that our clients were involved in after they got their K-1s back to the United States. As a practical matter, Embassies have not been as affected by this as DHS has been but there has been an impact and it has not been a particularly favorable one for prospective immigrants and in fact I would say quite the opposite. 

The thing to take away from this video is I think a review of this rule is very, very good news. One upshot of COVID-19 or the response thereto I should say, is at least out here we didn't see a lot of implementation of the old, if you want to call the old, the newly implemented by the Trump Administration Public Charge Rule because there just simply weren't that many cases processing through and the ones that were were sort of grandfathered in under the old rules. 

So, the point of this video is it looks like they are reviewing this. I don't think this is going to happen overnight but I am hoping we will see some substantially positive changes to the Public Charge rule that will hopefully be made more favorable to intending Immigrants to the United States.