There are a few thousand people with issued immigrant visas (from the DV category) who are barred from entry to the United States because of one of Trump’s proclamations.

You can read more about them here.

There are tens of thousands who are waiting for an interview for an immigrant visa in U.S. embassies all around the world. To be exact, 320,000 according to a report from the State department presented by immigration attorney Charles Kuck.

#LitigationWorks. Last night in a case filing, @StateDept released stunning numbers showing that more than 380,000 LEGAL immigrants are waiting for interviews at US Consulates. That number stood at 28,000 in 2017. Trump HAS stopped legal #immigration. pic.twitter.com/AoDcA1UXtq

— Charles Kuck (@ckuck) January 7, 2021

There are a lot of people whose procedures for a work visa have stopped because of this.

All of these groups are now waiting on a move from the new administration, ending the newest Trump’s proclamation from December 31, 2020, which is extending the previous proclamations from April and June, all in order to ban entry into America for new immigrants and people on work visas.

There are chances that the bans will be ended by a court, through the ongoing litigation in a couple of group lawsuits but in this article we will focus on the president-elect and his plans.

The Worldwide Times sent questions to Biden’s transition press team on Sunday, asking if he will end Trump’s ban, but there isn’t any response so far.

There were other attempts for an answer on this.

“A representative for Mr. Biden’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment, ” states this CBS article on the bans by Camilo Montoya-Galvez.

So, without a precise answer, we should start guessing – what would Biden do…

While he and Kamala Harris have said numerous things on the new immigration bill that they will present immediately, they are yet to say a thing on the proclamations.

On the campaign trail, Biden talked about the Muslim ban.

“If I have the honor of being president, I will end the Muslim ban on day one,” Biden said in July.

Many people have argued that there isn’t any point in ending the Muslim ban if these proclamations stay. Then the people from predominantly Muslim countries would be in the same position as all the others meaning that nobody will be able to enter, or in other words – nothing will change for them, so the removal of the Muslim ban would be meaningless without removing the other bans.

Biden has also vowed to support the Diversity Visa lottery which Trump wanted to abolish. This is a snippet from his campaign website:

This should be good news for all of the people who got their visas in September but are barred from entry, and also for all of the people who didn’t get a chance for interview from the 2020 generation (lottery draw in May 2019, interviews from October 2019 to September 2020). We should note that the second situation would require some kind of action from Congress. Also good news for the people who won the DV lottery for the fiscal year 2021 (lottery draw in May 2020, interviews from October 2020 to September 2021), but are yet to start with interviews.

There also was this one comment on immigration and executive orders on Jan 8, 2021. The video starts from 1:35:56:

This was the question.

“And lastly, beyond the Covid plan that you detailed, what are your legislative priorities, you talked about infrastructure, you talked about introducing an immigration bill. After January 20, Democrats will control the House and the Senate. What do you do first?, ”, a journalist asked.

This was the response.

“Three different initiatives in that same question. One, the commitments I made that I would introduce, not necessarily we would move to, but introduce in the United States Congress. I will introduce an immigration bill immediately, and have it sent to the appropriate committees to begin movement. I will in fact, countermand the executive orders that the president has in fact initiated that are contrary to, what I think, is either his authority and/or even if it is his authority, contrary to the interest of the United States on environmental issues and a whole range of other things, ” Biden said.

He continued talking about the pandemic and the money that he will ask from Congress to deal with it, on vaccines and other areas.

So, in short Biden will end executive orders that Trump has signed, but he didn’t say which of them. If we are to speculate analyzing his response, then we can say that he should certainly end the proclamations that are banning entry. The question was broader but the reporter mentioned only one area in specific, and that’s migration. Biden responded to the whole question, but also started addressing the immigration part of the question talking about the immigration bill and then immediately continued on executive orders. I marked those parts of the answer in red and you can see how close they are one to another – just 10 seconds apart. However, he only mentioned one area for the executive orders, and that’s the environment. We can only assume that immigration is part of the “whole range of other things”.

Perhaps the closest we got to an answer from Biden on the proclamations was a June tweet of his, where he criticized Trump’s extension of the proclamation in question.

This is yet another attempt to distract from this Administration’s failure to lead an effective response to COVID-19. Immigrants help grow our economy and create jobs. The President can’t scapegoat his way out of this crisis. https://t.co/FEqWNJG6TK

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 23, 2020

If he thinks that this was wrong and that “immigrants help grow the economy and create jobs”, then he should most definitely end the proclamation.

So… what would Biden do?

Well… that is something that only Biden knows.

But taking into account all the things mentioned above, there is a very good chance that Biden will end the bans, maybe even on day one. 

Only five more days until we find out…

Written by: Jovan Postoloski

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