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The Times notes that Trump created a systematic bottleneck to legal immigration, doubling the time needed to approve employer-sponsored green cards and pushing up the backlog for citizenship applications by 80% since 2014. “In almost every case over the last four years, immigrating to the United States has become harder, more expensive and takes longer,” writes the outlet.
The Biden blueprint is dubbed the “D.H.S. Plan to Restore Trust in Our Legal Immigration System” and includes seven sections that would help boost legal immigration across the board, including among high-skilled workers, trafficking victims, families of Americans living abroad, American Indians born in Canada, refugees, asylum-seekers, and farmworkers.
But Biden’s goal isn’t just to reverse Trump’s policies, but rather to overhaul the system, opening up even more opportunities for people to legally immigrate to the U.S. And much of it can be enacted without passing new immigration laws through Congress.
One of the administration’s first goals is to address the backlog of applicants by using virtual interviews and reducing paperwork by expanding electronic filings—essentially bringing the process into the 21st century. The president also aims to restore the H-1B visa program for highly skilled workers, and provide new immigration opportunities for entrepreneurs that have plans to start companies and contribute to job creation in the country.
“There are significant changes that need to be made to really open up all avenues of legal immigration,” Felicia Escobar Carrillo, chief of staff at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told the Times. “In the same way that they took a broad-stroke approach to closing off avenues, I think we want to take a broad approach toward opening up the legal avenues that have always been available but that they tried to put roadblocks up on.”
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