With less than 20 days to Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump has extended his ban on certain immigration prospects as well as visa issuance to March 31 – two months after he might have left office. Legal immigrants willing to work in the United States may have to wait until Trump leaves office before applying again, and it remains unknown if incoming president Joe Biden will sustain Trump’s immigration restrictions or revoke them.
It will be recalled that the Trump administration had prioritized a ban on immigrants since the first day he became president, and he remains committed to the mandate to his last day in office. In his first days in office, he placed a travel restriction on seven Muslim countries and the ban remains in effect till Trump’s last days in office. With the latest restriction on legal immigrants and visa issuance, the administration is citing the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic recession as reasons for extending the current entry restrictions.
“The effects of COVID-19 on the United States labor market and on the health of American communities is a matter of ongoing national concern,” the Trump administration stated. “The current number of new daily cases worldwide reported by the World Health Organization, for example, is higher than the comparable number present during June, and while therapeutics and vaccines are recently available for an increasing number of Americans, their effect on the labor market and community health has not yet been fully realized.”
Blaming the coronavirus pandemic as well as the economic downturn contradicts President Trump’s rhetoric that his administration crippled the pandemic and even boosted job creation. The president continues to mildly deny the fact that the pandemic is surging anew across the nation with new daily records for COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations, CBS News reports.
Many individuals and groups continue to berate the Trump administration for crushing the American Dream and separating families to the detriment of the country’s interests. A number of groups are have filed a lawsuit against the government for the administration’s immigration policies with many of them still pending even when Trump is leaving office in a few weeks.
Karen Tumlin, the founder of the Justice Action Center and a lawyer challenging the visa restrictions, said she looks forward to Joe Biden revoking many of Trump’s immigration policies when the Biden/Harris presidency kicks off on January 20.
“Too many families have been separated and too many dreams have been crushed by this unlawful ban,” Tumlin said. “We will continue to challenge this ban in court and urge the Biden-Harris administration to repeal all of President Trump’s xenophobic presidential proclamations, including this ban, on day one of their administration.”
Source: cnn.com
