2021 AILA Conference Day 2 Session 4: Biden's Priorities For Immigration During His Presidency

What is Biden administration’s plan for the next four years? Hi everyone, this is Joseph. This is day two session four of ALAS 2021 conference. Now, we’ve already covered a lot of the same subject matter in the previous sessions, but there’s one thing that’s unique about these panelists, because these panelists, they are actually writing out the memo for Biden’s administration.

In the previous sessions, a lot of the ALAS attorneys are talking about what happened in the past 100 days. A lot of the sessions before are government officials in the administration talking about what they are trying to change in their position. But here, these people, these panelists, these esteemed honored guests, they’re talking about what the future holds, what they’re trying to do with the Biden administration. So there’s nobody to speak on this subject matter than these panelists. Let’s get started.

[Tsang Intro Splash]

[0:58] The best way to talk about what’s going to happen in the next four years is to divide the efforts into two camps. The first camp is undoing a lot of the policies put in place by the prior administration. When Donald Trump was president, he implemented over a thousand immigration policies. And that’s not including their point. He’s in the judicial branch and also in the executive branch. So it’s pretty remarkable the changes he’s made in the fabric of the immigration policies. As a whole, now, one of the first things that the Biden administration is going to do is to hold up to the promise and take back a lot of those policies, rolling those back, canceling them and appointing new people. That’s a big effort because the Trump administration made this his primary goal. And so unlike Biden, immigration reform is not one of his biggest goals, but it is very important. But the Trump administration, when they went into the presidency, they were full skill after immigration. So rolling back, changing some of those policies is going to take a lot of effort.

[2:07] Some of these efforts include making the immigration system as we know today, much more efficient, fair and accountable changes to asylum law, detention centers. The list goes on and on. And you can tell that the agency is already changing by the very words that they’re using. When they describe applicants before they were “aliens,” as an illegal aliens coming to the US stealing our benefits. But now the USCIS is beginning to call applicants customers like customer service, right? And so just having that right attitude, right? Having that right philosophy in treating your applicants is going to be a tremendous difference in the way these adjudicators treat the cases that they’re handling. This is a huge difference. You can take your job as if you are a benefit organization, you’re looking down the list and see if the applicants meet the particular requirements so you can give a particular benefit, right? You’re a benefit agency or you are a vetting agency. If you feel like people who are applying are trying to steal benefits and you’re trying to find flaws in the application to deny them, then that’s a very different attitude, right?

[3:21] So what attitude are you going to have in your agency and how are you going to adjudicate cases? Now of course, as a USCIS as officer, you are going to do both, right? You’re supposed to deny cases and approve cases, but how you treat it, what’s the spirit that you bring makes a big difference. And this is very much a top down approach.

And so when Biden took office, he saw that he is going to restore faith in our immigration system. And that is so important. And all of this falls under the first camp, undoing a lot of the things that the prior administration did because they fall under a different philosophy. And so that’s going to take a lot of work. Think about everything that’s inefficient about the immigration system falls under the first camp. If you have any ideas of what’s inefficient about our system, let me know and I will voice it for you.

[4:14] And now the second camp is what the Biden administration is going to try to do to steer our immigration system to a new chapter. Now there are two guideposts to this. The first one was actually implemented by Obama. When he was president, the Trump administration tried to kill it, but it didn’t lose steam. It was still there, but nothing just really happened. And so now this coming back is very much likely going to be a huge benefit to entrepreneurs in the United States. What is this? This is the immigration entrepreneur rule. Some people know it as the EB6. Following the EB5, but not really. Basically, this is the idea. If you are an entrepreneur and your idea can bring the US substantial good, then we will allow you to be in the US. We will parole you in. That’s kind of like using the president’s executive power to allow them to be in the US without getting kicked out by the executive branch. Okay? That’s a lot of words. Let me break it down for you.

[5:14] So just like the DACA program, basically is saying there are people who are beneficial to the US society. They’re not a threat. Why don’t we just allow them to be here and let’s not kick them out yet? That’s essentially what DACA is. They are so low on the priority list of people who are illegal here that we really don’t need to kick them out. Let’s allow them to get a job. Let’s them allow them to pay taxes. For all intents and purposes, they’ve been here since they were young. They graduated high school. They’re practically one of us. Let’s just deprioritize them and give them work from it.

[5:48] In a similar fashion, people who are entrepreneurs, maybe they’re not here right now or they are here. But if they can have some sort of business idea that’s well-funded and good idea, let’s give them an opportunity to create this enterprise and not kick them out. Now, this is very, very unique because it’s not creating a new visa category, creating a new visa category requires congressional approval. They need to create it. There’s EB1, EB2, EB3, EB4, EB5. And that’s been the case for the longest time. And there’s no real new visa category until they implement it. Well, why don’t we just allow, parole them in, allow them to stay here in the US, get a work permit. For all intents and purposes, live here. Of course, they can’t vote. But we’re not going to kick them out because they are doing something that is of substantial worth. So the Obama administration created this program. The Trump administration tried to kill it. And then now Biden’s administration is probably going to revive it and make it happen. And this will be very, very beneficial for anybody with a good idea.

[6:56] The second major guide post is the immigration bill that got passed by the House. Well, it is known as the wish list. There’s all these things that the Biden administration wants to achieve. They have the House support. But of course, the Senate is not likely to approve it. Yet, maybe some of these can be breaking off, put into other bills and eventually get passed through the Senate. We’ll see in the next four years. But at least this already has the House’s approval. A lot of the ideas there have been well researched, well documented laid out since the Obama administration. And now it’s at the last step. So depending on the right opportunity, some of these might actually take place. And that will completely change the future of immigration law as we know it.

[7:44] But perhaps the most important change to the future of immigration policies in the next four years is not rolling back the policies. Is not these two guideposts, but it’s actually you. You and me working together and changing the immigration, being active, demonstrating and bringing the ground level problems up to CBP, up to USCIS, up to the government so that they can make a change. That is the most important.

I remember back in law school, one of the judges told us young law students, “the change belongs in your hands. Us as judges, we sit back and we can only rule on cases that are brought to us. If you don’t bring a case to us, we can’t make a decision and it doesn’t change society. So you as attorneys, you as activists, you as immigration practitioners, you as individual clients, your case, if it got denied unjustly, if it could denied wrongfully, bring that to their attention. USCIS, CBP officers, AILA National, the Ombudsman, everybody is here standing by your side. We want to take that case and bring it up to the highest echelon of this society. Bring it to Biden’s attention and we will make a change unless you do that. We won’t know and we can’t make the change that’s necessary to make America great. So America is in your hands.” Please, if you have anything, anything at all, please let us know, let the panelists know we are eager to make the change happen.

[9:16] Okay, and that’s it for today’s episode. If you like what you’re seeing, please hit that like button and subscribe. This is day two of AILA 2021. We still have two more days. There’s so many great sessions coming up. Can’t wait to share them with you. I’ll talk to you later. 

Bye-bye.