Biden’s immigration actions: three themes

Pew Research has published a comprehensive summary of the Biden administrations actions on immigration. Three themes stand out.

  1. The Trump administration took some 1,000 executive actions many of which Biden has been reversing.
  2. Desire to increase employment based immigration. One of the initiatives is the filing of a comprehensive reform bill.  Green card volume would go up to around 1.5 million, compared to one million pre-Trump and about 500,000 at the current rate.  Biden’s bill has gone nowhere. But during 2021 the administration sought to reverse Trump’s efforts to curtail economic immigration (which in part was forestalled by courts) and in January 2022 opened up more opportunities for foreign students and temporary visa holders to stay in the U.S. and work.
  3. Retain the highly controversial Trump Mexican border policies. For a depiction of Biden’s handling of Stay in Mexico policy, I posted here. For Biden’s Title 42 expulsion policy, I posted here.

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