Hi, this is Kaushik Ranchod, and welcome to our latest immigration news update. We’re going to be talking about President Trump versus Joe Biden on immigration law in the United Staes.Immigration law is fundamental, so you’ll want to stay tuned to learn both of their policies and the differences to decide on whom you want to vote for, or be more informed about what could happen if you’re not able to vote.
So I’m going to start with Joe Biden’s immigration policy. You can know a little bit more about what he plans on doing once he gets into office.
Overall, Joe Biden plans on reversing many of President Trump’s immigration policies – let’s look specifically at how this plays out. Joe Biden calls President Trump’s policies racist and morally bankrupt, and we will talk about that. We’ll talk about that when we go into President Trump’s policies, so you’ll see why this is true.
I am a little bit biased being an immigration lawyer. Seeing what happens every day around me, I’m going to delve into why these assertions are factual.
Joe Biden plans on an increased screening but in a different way, not by building that crazy wall, but by doing a more intelligent beefing up of security. Joe Biden plans to create a path for citizenship for people here in the United States and undocumented. Joe Biden plans on restoring the integrity of the asylum system. What happened under President Trump was an attack on asylum, and one of the things our nation is known for is the honoring of human rights: that has been under attack under the Trump administration. Joe Biden plans on restoring asylum to what it once was.
Another thing that Joe Biden plans on doing is giving dreamers a path to U.S. citizenship. Now, this is not just a path but giving them U.S. citizenship. But that this is really really a huge departure from President Trump plans.
The supreme court has pushed Daca back to the Trump administration and did not end it, but allows the Trump administration to end it. The Trump Administration is trying to end Daca now.
This is a huge policy change and what’s important and notable here is that usually, a path to citizenship is not simple. People think, oh, I can apply for citizenship, but it’s not that easy. Usually, the whole process involves first getting a visa and then getting a green card. Getting a green card is not easy, and it can be a long process. Three years after getting a green card, if you got your green card through marriage, you can apply for a marriage-based green card. After five years, you can apply for citizenship if the green card was based on employment or another way for citizenship.
So this allows one to apply immediately for citizenship, of course. We’ll have to see what Joe Biden does when he gets elected. I thought that was notable by Joe Biden: he wants to end the uncertainty for Daca holders, which has been unfair. The Trump administration has just elevated that uncertainty and heighten the fear, which has been a theme for the Trump Presidency.
Another thing that Biden will do is end the travel ban on some of the Muslim countries. This travel ban on Muslim countries has been detrimental. For instance, we get many talented doctors that come from these countries. It’s been harmful to creating separation of families, and Biden would end that. Another thing that Biden would end is the penalization – the penalization to sanctuary cities. The Trump administration has punished sanctuary cities, and Biden would reverse that. So that’s something that’s also pretty awesome.
Another thing that Biden would do is condemn family separation. You’ve seen on tv the horrific separation of children from their family members, the cruelty he’s going to eliminate through his immigration policies. He’s also going to reverse what President Trump has done for TPS. President Trump has ended TPS for several countries, and Biden will reverse that back to what it once was. That has been really, really, sad. Temporary Protective Status is for certain countries where people have had to flee their homelands. The United States has always been a country that has tried to lift people through human rights. The Trump administration has taken that away, and Joe Biden restores these programs’ integrity and back to uh the moral fabric of our country – pretty cool!
What is interesting is that Joe Biden has not always been a liberal on immigration. If you look at his record, he has voted for some restrictionist policies in 2006. On that occasion, he voted for the secure fence act of 1996. There was a very restrictive immigration law that has been very detrimental to immigration today. For instance, if you entered the U.S. with two unlawful entries and you’ve overstayed for more than a year, you’re subject to a permanent ban. I see a lot of people come through my office who are subjected to this permanent bar. The Clinton administration put that law into effect, and it’s hurt a lot of families. It will be interesting to see if Biden departs from these restrictions, which Biden has voted for and passed in legislation. If you look at what he’s put out on his website and whatnot that he does tend to take a departure from his past course of action: you never know until someone takes office, and we will see what happens.
Hopefully, if he does win the election in the first one-hundred days, Joe Biden has announced that he’s going to put people into removal only if they have criminal convictions. Biden is going to get rid of the asylum policies, and he’s going to reunite families. So in the first hundred days, he’s going to take immediate action.
What I saw happen with the Trump administration is we didn’t see things go into effect immediately. It took time for things to go into effect. But he has a plan for the first hundred days – like you know boom boom boom a 100 days is pretty fast, so we’ll see. You know what happens, but he already wants to start reversing things immediately. President Trump has done many things through executive order, so it’s not necessarily through the change of law but through what’s called an executive order. S
President Trump implemented things through executive order will be reversed very quickly. What’s been interesting with the Trump administration is it seems like he’s had this weird obsession with just trying to reverse everything that Obama did.
Therefore if Joe Biden gets elected, it will be a reversal to like redoing what President Trump did—going back to what Obama initially created in his presidency, where Joe Biden was vice president. So it’s going to be a pretty exciting time if Biden gets elected. One of the most significant reversals that the Biden administration will implement is getting rid of the public charge rule that the Trump administration has implemented. This is very detrimental to green card holders, not allowing green card holders to apply if they’ve taken certain types of public benefits. That will be one of the things that Joe Biden will do, and if you are someone who has taken public benefits, you’ll want to consult with an immigration attorney to make sure that that’s not going to affect your green card application. The public charge rule, a law that’s recently gone to effect, has been litigated a lot in the courts. Unfortunately, it’s restricting immigration for green card holders, and it’s changed the past lay of the land for showing that someone will not be a public charge to the United States.
Another thing that we’re going to see is that what President Trump did to help build the walls. He took diverted money by claiming that it’s a national emergency. A national emergency to build the wall. But that’s what he said – it’s a national emergency – to build the wall. So President Trump garnered funds to build the wall, and the Biden administration will also be reversing that.
So one of the exciting things is that during the Obama administration, you’ll notice that there was the Dapa (that is, if you’ve been following immigration law), which provided a pathway for many undocumented immigrants to become legal. This issue went to the supreme court, and the supreme court denied Dapa. Joe Biden is committed to making history and making (giving) a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented people living in the United States because there’s no pathway for them.
There’s no way for them to get legal, and people think that there is a way for them to get legal, but that’s not the case. There is no pathway for many of these people, many of the 11 million undocumented people, to get legal, and that would be one of the Biden administration hallmarks.
According to what his website says, part of Joe Biden’s hundred-day plan is a moratorium on removals except for felony people. A lot of Biden’s policies are reversing President Trump’s policies and then taking action on Daca. Those are the three main characteristics that I see with the Biden plan. We’ve gone to the Joe Biden plan, now let’s look at what the Trump plan is. You’ve seen what President Trump’s done. President Trump came into power by basically using immigrants as a scapegoat, touting the wall’s building. Now you don’t see that rhetoric as much because many middle-class Americans don’t care as much. They don’t care because there are other more pressing issues such as the coronavirus, so you don’t see President Trump play that rhetoric as much. But you know the wall is still a major thing. It’s still taking money from the defense fund claiming. The defense fund is a national emergency, and building out the wall – that’s one of his hallmarks.
Another aspect of the President Trump plan that I’ve seen is that it’s just basically trying to attack immigration in any way that he can. If he becomes president again, I expect that he will continue to do that. President Trump has also created a cap on refugees to enter the United States to 18,000. He has also created the Muslim ban, so expect that to continue. Expect the family separation to continue – losing talented researchers and scientists and doctors because of that Muslim ban.
That’s where, you know, Joe Biden says his plans are racist and morally bankrupt, pointing to the Muslim ban pointing to the racist epithets of the wall and the racism surrounding that and calling countries from TPS (I don’t even want to say the language). That kind of rhetoric is where Joe Biden is saying that this is morally bankrupt and racist. So you can see a clash there, and it’ll be interesting to see, you know, how much this is going to be a factor in the election because the immigration has been downplayed. It wasn’t something that was even discussed in the vice-presidential debates.
President Trump also punished sanctuary cities, denying them funds. He’s ended uh temporary protected status to several countries. One big embarrassment for him was where he tried to send students who were taking online classes back to their home country, and he had many law school lawsuits from top universities in the country: MIT, a whole host of universities. He had to rescind that position allowing international students to stay in the United States, but he tried to use covid. Many of his current immigration policies are trying to use covid to use that as a pretext and an excuse to hurt immigration policies. If you’ve recently looked at removal statistics for the year 2019, year-to-date, 269,000 undocumented immigrants were arrested. So you’re seeing numbers in the order of 200 thousand for the last few years for undocumented immigrants. Therefore, if Trump continues to be president, I see a continued immigration attack with denials up 30 percent in many areas – some areas of immigration even higher. The focus on building this wall continuing to hurt asylum policies.
That’s what I see for the Trump administration, and that’s where Joe Biden says it’s morally bankrupt and racist policies.
I hope this video serves you. You’ve got to understand the differences between Joe Biden and President Trump’s immigration policies. They haven’t been discussed that much.
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