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SAN DIEGO – President Joe Biden on Wednesday lifted the freeze on green cards issued by his predecessor during the pandemic which lawyers say was blocking most legal immigration to the United States.
Former President Donald Trump last spring halted green card issuance until the end of 2020 in the name of protecting the coronavirus-ravaged labor market – a reason Trump gave for making many of the cuts of legal immigration that had escaped him before the pandemic.
On December 31, Trump extended those orders until the end of March.
Trump had viewed immigrants as a “risk to the American labor market” and blocked their entry into the United States by issuing Proclamation 10014 and Proclamation 10052.
Biden said in his proclamation Wednesday that closing the door on legal immigrants “does not advance the interests of the United States.”
“On the contrary, it is hurting the United States, including preventing some family members of US citizens and lawful permanent residents from joining their families here. It also hurts industries in the United States that use talent from around the world, ”Biden said in his proclamation.
Most immigrant visas have been blocked by orders, according to immigration lawyers.
According to the American Immigrant Lawyers Association, as many as 120,000 family preference visas were lost largely due to the pandemic-related freeze in fiscal year 2020. Immigrants could not bring in members of their family. family unless they are U.S. citizens applying for visas for their spouse or children under the age of 21.
It also barred entry to immigrants with employment-based visas unless they were seen as beneficial to the national interest, such as medical professionals.
And it slammed the door on thousands of visa lottery winners who were randomly selected from a pool of around 14 million applicants to receive green cards that would allow them to live permanently in the United States.
The stranded visas add to a growing backlog that has reached 437,000 for family visas alone, said California immigration attorney Curtis Morrison, who represented thousands of people stranded by the freeze.
“I am delighted for my clients who are now able to enter the United States,” he said. “But this backlog will take years if the administration does not take ambitious measures.”
A federal judge last year rendered a ruling that virtually lifted Proclamation 10052 by allowing temporary foreign workers to enter the United States if their employers are members of the American Chamber of Commerce or several other large organizations that represent a much of the US economy.
But Proclamation 10014 continued to block thousands of immigrants.
Immigration lawyers said they were surprised Biden did not immediately lift the freeze as he did with Trump’s travel ban on people from predominantly Muslim countries. As a result, some immigrants stranded by the travel ban found that they still could not come to the United States due to the freeze.
Biden’s actions come just days after thousands of visa lottery winners at risk of expiring their visas won a court order that put their visas on hold by the judge in the case. Now they will be able to use their visas to enter the country.
The United States makes available up to 55,000 visas per year for immigrants whose nationalities are under-represented in the United States population. Visas must be used within six months of being issued.
Meanwhile, Biden proposed legislation that would limit the presidential power to issue future bans against immigrants.
The president did not say whether there would be recourse for visa lottery winners who lost due to pandemic-era policies. But he calls on the United States to increase the number of diversity visas available through the lottery each year from 55,000 to 80,000.
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