Statutes of Liberty: Trump Admin Immigration Polices Frozen

This sponsored column is by James Montana, Esq. and Doran Shemin, Esq., practising attorneys at Steelyard LLC, an immigration-targeted regulation firm located in Arlington, Virginia. The lawful info supplied below is normal in nature. If you want legal information, get in touch with James for an appointment.

In the good metropolis of Washington D.C., we have a semi-quadrennial custom. Just after we vote the bums out, the bums commit their final weeks in business doing work to enshrine their political application via past-minute regulatory and staff actions. It is not the most picturesque tradition, but it is ours.

The Trump administration did precisely this with regard to immigration law and coverage. It promulgated all sorts of restrictions concerning asylum, pupil visas and the H-1B plan: Asylum candidates would have to present “extreme and severe” damage, learners would have to renew their visas commonly, and H-1B petitions would be cherry-picked for the greatest-shelling out work opportunities.

The Biden administration — like Mr. Freeze, the most delightfully terrible Batman villain of all time — has put all of these variations on ice with a memorandum entitled The Regulatory Freeze Memorandum. In brief, it suggests that all of these midnight procedures are currently being despatched to the cooler.

[Arnold Schwarzenegger voice] CHILL

Right here is the genuine text. In paraphrase, it states:

  • No new polices may perhaps be sent for publication in the Federal Sign up until a Biden-appointed agency head says so.
  • Polices sent to the Federal Sign up but not but revealed in the Federal Register shall not be published until finally a Biden-appointed agency head claims so.
  • Rules despatched to the Federal Register and posted but with an powerful date in the foreseeable future will not turn out to be efficient for at minimum 60 dates from Jan. 28, 2021.

What this means, in exercise, is that recently proposed improvements to the H-1B visa program, the asylum process and the immigration courts will be frozen till the Biden administration decides (almost certainly) to withdraw them. All rules, which were being efficient prior to Inauguration Working day, will keep on being in drive. It usually takes as significantly administrative paper-shuffling to repeal a regulation as it does to promulgate one particular, so the Trump administration’s solution to immigration inquiries will be with us for some time.

The Biden administration has introduced, with great fanfare, that the Section of Justice will be ending contracts with non-public prisons. Which is all to the superior, but we want our audience to recognize the puppy that is not barking: the Office of Homeland Stability, which holds the lion’s share of personal prison contracts, will be renewing its contracts with the pretty exact same contractors.

We delight in answering issues about immigration from commenters. We also love the oeuvre of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Question us anything at all, and we’ll do our best to respond to.