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Biden Executive Order Regarding US Immigration

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Biden Executive Order, a recent Executive Order. This is from whitehouse.gov and it is titled: Executive Order on Restoring Faith in our Legal Immigration Systems and Strengthening Integration and Inclusion Efforts for New Americans. There is a lot in here. I am going to quote directly some salient points I thought were good for this video. I am making some other videos contemporaneously with this one. We are going to get into a little of the nuts and bolts with that but I want to get this point across. Quoting directly: "It is essential to ensure that our laws and policies encourage full participation by Immigrants including refugees in our civic life that Immigration processes and other benefits are delivered effectively and efficiently and that the federal government eliminates sources of fear and other barriers,” and this I wanted to emphasize, “that prevent immigrants from accessing government services available to them.” So that was noteworthy.

Then going further under Section 3 where it says “restoring trust in our legal Immigration system”. “The Secretary of State, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall review existing regulations, orders, guidance, documents, policies and any other similar agency actions, collectively agency actions that may be inconsistent with the policy set forth in Section 1.” So again this all refers back to section 1 and section 1, I don't mean to paraphrase the Executive Order but there is a lot here and I think for purposes of this video to distill it down; basically not trying to be obstructionist to intending immigrants is the gist of it. Quoting further: “Identify barriers that impede access to immigration benefits and fair efficient adjudications of these benefits and make recommendations on how to remove these barriers as appropriate and consistent with applicable law.” For example, just from what we have seen here in the past few months, perhaps simply receiving and what I would call receding in, petitions for immigration benefits in a timely manner. Up until the fourth quarter of 2020, when we would file petitions, you send them off to USCIS, they would get them, within two weeks maybe three, we would see a receipt notice back. I have got cases we filed back in October that we are still waiting around for receipt notices on. Okay, the mail system has been a little slow but honestly, I mean come on it has been months in some of these cases; weeks certainly but months longer than it needs to be. So again barriers. “Identify any agency actions that fail to promote access to the legal immigration system such as the final rule entitled US Citizenship and Immigration Services fee schedule and changes to certain other immigration benefit request requirements. In light of the emergency stop gap USCIS stabilization Act and recommend steps as appropriate and consistent with applicable law to revise and rescind those agency actions.” Then quoting further: “Within 90 days of the date of this Order, the Secretary of State, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall each submit a plan to the President describing the steps their respective agencies will take to advance the policy set forth in Section 1 of this order.”

What should be taken away from this? 1. Executive Orders take a little while. It is not going to be overnight when we see this implemented. What I think one should take away from this is look this Administration is not going to be like the last administration and I don’t want to get political here. This does not have anything to do with one’s political philosophy. I am simple talking about this in the narrow context of US Immigration but the last Administration especially the final two years, it just seemed like all they were doing was just obstructionism at an administrative level if nothing else. Just rules created, directives handed down, things amended or modified just to make the overall process harder. Now I would argue Trump had the first two years of his administration where his party had the two houses of Congress to go ahead and put through legislation to make fundamental changes to the law. As an attorney you make changes through the legislative process. That just is what it is. Elections have consequences but to do this kind of obstructionism via the administrative apparatus and the Executive Order apparatus, I just found it to be very disheartening and really not in line with the principals of Constitutionalism in the United States. Again, this is just simply a legal analysis of mine and the way I looked at it legally. I am not getting into the politics of it but it looks like the Biden Administration is trying to at least on a paradigm level you know sort of reverse some of this stuff. It is not going to happen overnight. The US bureaucracy does not stop on a dime and just change direction. That is not how it works but I do think, we will start seeing substantive changes at least practical changes in the way in which cases are processed in the relatively near future.