Washington, D.C. (February 10, 2021)
– The Center for immigration Studies has published a four-part series highlighting commonsense immigration regulations nearly completed by the Trump administration that should be finalized by the Biden administration.
Robert Law, the Center’s Director of Regulatory Affairs and Policy and the former USCIS Policy Chief, said, “The Biden administration should see these four rules across the finish line and not allow politics to be prioritized over promoting good policies. Each of these rules has validity. For example, allowing aliens with final orders of removal to work is contrary to the national interest, undermines judicial resources used to obtain the final order, introduces unnecessary competition into the labor force, and undercuts the rule of law.”
USCIS currently approves work permits for aliens who, after extensive due process, receive a final order of removal but are not swiftly repatriated. This occurs when the home country denies or delays the issuance of travel documents. For example, the People’s Republic of China often slow walks providing travel documents. If finalized, this rule limits eligibility for a discretionary work permit to the narrow instances allowed under the statute and stops the current practice of awarding work permits to all released on an order of supervision when they have no lawful basis to remain in the country.
Congress created the SIJ classification to provide a pathway to legal status for certain alien children in the U.S. foster care system who required judicial intervention for protection from parental abuse, abandonment, or neglect. But the classification has increasingly been abused simply for the purpose of obtaining lawful immigration status. The Trump rule was a modified carry-over from the Obama era proposed rule that was never finalized. The Biden administration has the opportunity to be the administration which finalizes the rule.
DHS proposed to require student (F), exchange visitor (J), and foreign media (I) visas to have fixed-time-period admission – an expiration date would be set, rather than the status lasting for an undefined period of time. The proposed rule allowed for extensions of stay. The lack of check-ins with immigration officials under “duration of status” admissions poses substantial oversight and compliance problems which translate into national security and fraud problems.
USCIS sought to reform its methods for screening and vetting through a regulation that would modernize biometric collections, allowing DHS to better leverage readily available technology to identify individuals and to detect fraud.
