Trump had suspended the issuance of green cards until the end of 2020 in the name of protecting the labor market devastated by the coronavirus.
SAN DIEGO – President Joe Biden on Wednesday lifted a freeze on green cards issued by his predecessor during the pandemic that advocates said was blocking more legal immigration to the United States.
Former President Donald Trump last spring halted the issuance of green cards until the end of 2020 in the name of protecting the coronavirus-ravaged labor market.
Trump on Dec. 31 extended those orders until the end of March.
Trump had considered immigrants a "danger to the US labor market" and blocked their entry into the United States
Biden said in his statement Wednesday that closing the door to legal immigrants "does not advance the interests of the United States."
“On the contrary, it harms the United States, including by preventing certain family members of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents from reuniting with their families here. It also hurts industries in the United States that use talent from around the world," Biden said in his announcement.
Most of the immigrants' visas were blocked by the orders, according to immigration attorneys.
About 120,000 family-based preferential visas were lost mostly due to the pandemic-related freeze in the 2020 budget year, according to the American Immigrant Lawyers Association. Immigrants cannot bring family members unless they were US citizens applying for visas for their spouses or children under the age of 21.
It also banned the entry of immigrants on employment visas unless they were deemed useful to the national interest such as health care professionals.
And it slammed the door on thousands of visa lottery winners who were randomly selected from a pool of about 14 million applicants to be granted green cards that would let them live in the United States forever.
The frozen visas add to a growing backlog that has reached 437,000 for family-based visas alone, said California immigration attorney Curtis Morrison, who represented thousands of people blocked by the freeze.
Read more: botasot.al
