1: Temporary Protective Status

 
This is a temporary status that’s given to people who for one reason or another cannot
go back to their home countries. This is for nationals in Haiti, Central America,
Honduras, El Salvador. People lived with TPS for many, many, many years. Trump
arbitrarily ended this program. President Biden will be bringing TPS back. This is what I
expect. Folks with TPS, worried about TPS ending, TPS will be back.
 
2: DACA
 
This is a big one. DACA: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. So many of the
dreamers out there have been waiting for this moment. You’ve been so anxious
because you’re worried about your DACA ending. There was a decision in federal court
that said that the Trump administration didn’t have the authority to end the DACA
program. It ordered the USCIS to continue processing DACA applications, but the
Trump administration has refused to follow the court’s order. We expect Biden to use his
executive authority to maintain DACA if not expand it.
 
3: Do Away With Public Charge Rule
 
The Trump administration used its authority to come up with this new rule that would
make it like a wealth test to see who can come into the United States, and he came out
with this new form and they embedded it into the immigration laws. The legality of this
was highly subject to legal challenges. There was litigation about whether public charge
rules could stay into place. Then when we got into a situation where one court would
strike down public charge and then a higher court would reinstate it, and nobody was
really sure where things were going with the Public Charge rule. President Biden will
scrap Trump’s wealth test Public Charge rules entirely and look for him to maybe loosen
the rules. But that Public Charge rule is going to be out the window.
 
4: Filing Fee Pricing
 
The Trump administration jacked up the filing fees significantly. The filing fee to become
a naturalized U.S. citizen went up nearly 100%. I think it was like 80% and the filing fee
increases like everything else were subject to litigation. Those filing fee increases have
been put on hold. I expect president Biden to scrap the filing fee increases also. So
that’s another thing that we no longer have to worry about in my opinion, that’s very
likely not to be there anymore.
 
5: The Proclamations
 
When the pandemic hit, Donald Trump ran around the country and told everyone that
the Coronavirus was no big deal. He undermined public health. He said, we don’t have
to wear a mask, he said we should go back to church. That college football should be
played, he wanted everybody to disregard the pandemic and he constantly undermined
the seriousness of the Coronavirus. However, when it came to issuing Visas to people
who are outside the United States, suddenly the Coronavirus was used as a pretext to
restrict the issuance of Visas. He used proclamations to stop the DV Lottery Program,
the issuance of Visa preference categories in F1, F4 and all the other categories. It
restricted employment-based immigration and H1B Visas all under the guise of public
health. This was nonsense. If you’ve applied for your mother and father to come to the
United States, which you have the legal right to do as a U.S. Citizen, the notion that
your mother and father would have some impact on the labor market in the United
States is absurd. Biden is going to get rid of these proclamations entirely.
 
6: K1 Visas
 
The Trump administration in March made a decision arbitrarily to just stop processing
K1 Visas. All those K1 Visa cases were basically stuck. They made this decision, it was
very murky, they didn’t really tell anyone about it. They just said, “Well, this is no longer
a priority for us. We’re not going to process and issue K1 Visas.” This decision was
never something that they announced, it was all hidden, entirely a violation of the law. I
filed countless lawsuits against the Trump administration to help K1 Visa holders,
people seeking K1 Visas to avoid this sort of delay. We challenged those legal delays
and we got K1 Visas issued. Biden is going to build a functioning Visa processing
system. And hopefully the K1 visa will begin to move once he takes office.
 
7: The Muslim Ban
 
Donald Trump, when he was running for president in 2016, he said that we need to ban
all Muslims from the United States. When he said that, everybody thought that he was
crazy, like this was completely illegal discrimination based on Islamophobia or bias
against our friends and neighbors who are practicing Islam and who are Muslims. But
once he got into power, he actually did pass a Muslim ban. He didn’t call it that. He
called it a travel ban, and they dressed it up with some legal language. I still thought this
was absurdly unconstitutional. There is no way that the Muslim ban or travel ban or
whatever you want to call it, will be upheld in court. That’s what I thought. I was very
naive, because the Supreme Court said the Muslim ban was OK. The Muslim ban has
stayed into effect and he’s revised it a few times, he added Nigeria to the list of
countries. President Biden is going to get rid of the Muslim ban or travel ban or
whatever you call it.
 
8: The H1B Program
 
This is a Visa program for professional workers. The Trump administration just recently
came out with new rules that tamper with the prevailing wage. It would make it almost
impossible for anyone to get an H1B Visa because H1B Visa holders must be paid a
prevailing wage, but the amount of the prevailing wage was so high and so out of line
with the reality of the market, that practically nobody would get the H1B visa or qualify
for it. This has been subject to litigation. It’s in the courts right now, Biden is going to
revise that and eliminate that. H1B visa holders and companies that rely on H1B visa
workers should feel some relief on that issue.
 
9: Processing Times
 
Under Trump, the processing times for all types of immigration cases has slowed down
tremendously. Some of that is naturally due to the pandemic. You got to wonder when
USC is run by Ken Cuccinelli, who despises immigrants, and Mike Pompeo is running
the state department, the agency that issues the visas. And he also shares Trump’s
animus towards immigrants. Neither of those people are particularly competent. Neither
of them care whether people get the visas or the green cards that they deserve. And
they’ve run those two agencies practically into the ground. We see processing times
that are out of line with anything I’ve seen in my career. We used to get work permits in
four months for people. And now they’re stuck for six, seven, eight months. People hire
me to file lawsuits to challenge the delays, all the cases. We have asylum seekers who
have been waiting six years for a visa interview. All these things are abnormal and
reflect Trump’s enduring hatred of immigrants. I expect that USCIS and the state
department will begin to function as they should. And eventually, processing times will
be back into the realm of what’s normal and reasonable.
 
10: Asylum
 
When Trump was running for president, he said, I’m not against immigration. I’m just
against illegal immigration. I want immigrants to do it the right way. Once he took power,
he started tampering with the laws and the procedures and the way the laws were
administered. And there’s no program that he despised more than asylum. Asylum is
legal immigration. We have immigration laws that govern the issuance and the
adjudication of asylum application. Trump doesn’t like any of that. So what he did was
he said, we’re going to create a new program. If you want to seek asylum, you can no
longer do it in the United States. You have to wait in Mexico. He created a highly illegal
program called MPP. And also they created this fake rule that we’ve come to refer to as
metering, or you go to the border to apply for asylum, which is your legal right under US
immigration law, and international law. But instead of being allowed to apply for asylum,
they say, well, the borders closed today. You can’t apply for asylum. You have to come
back later. And they only let certain people apply for asylum. Over time, Biden will
administer asylum applications as per the rule of law, and I think that everyone who
seeks asylum will be able to do so in a legal manner under the Biden administration.
 
Expect A Lot Of Immigration Changes, And Hopefully Soon
 
Those are the 10 changes that I most expect from president Biden. He’s going to use
his executive authority to get the rule of law back into place when it comes to
immigration law. I’m tremendously excited about these changes. There’ll be real
opportunities for people. It’s just a wonderful thing. I’m tired from fighting the Trump
administration for the last four years, and I’m ready to see some positive changes. I look
forward to helping you and your families with this. If you need anything, I’m here for you.
Take care.