Trump curtails entering US legally
In campaign, he lauded lawful immigration
On a 2016 campaign stop in Illinois, then-candidate Donald Trump invited to the stage a man wearing a shirt that read: “Legal Immigrant For Trump.”
Asked to say a few words to the crowd, the man chastised the media for missing a fundamental aspect of Trump’s candidacy: that he was opposed to illegal immigration, not legal immigration. Trump patted the man on the back and told him, “I totally support it.”
“People are going to come into our country,” Trump said. “We want people to come in. But they’ve got to come in, like you, legally. My man.”
Despite his campaign rhetoric, President Trump has acted very differently since moving into the White House. His administration has granted fewer visas, approved fewer refugees, ordered the removal of hundreds of thousands of legal residents whose home countries have been hit by war and natural disasters, and pushed Congress to pass laws to dramatically cut the entire immigration system.
The White House has argued the moves are necessary to protect national security and American workers.
“These are measures that will make our community safer and more prosperous,” Trump said while laying out some of the proposals in a meeting with lawmakers in January.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued the latest volley Monday when he limited the ability of foreign victims of domestic violence and gang violence to seek safe haven in the U.S. through asylum.
“That’s further confirmation that
the administration’s official policy toward legal immigration is restriction by any means necessary,” said David Bier, an immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. “They’re looking across all programs for ways that they can reduce the number of new legal permanent residents and other foreign workers in the U.S. economy.”
The administration could get some help from Congress starting next week. That’s when House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., scheduled a vote on two immigration bills. Both would grant deportation protections to undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, known as DREAMers, but include cuts to the legal immigration system.
Here’s a look at the ways the Trump administration has approached the nation’s legal immigration system:
Limiting asylum
Unlike previous administrations, the Trump White House has taken aim at the nation’s asylum program, which protects foreigners fleeing persecution in their home countries.
Sessions has complained the program is being abused by “dirty immigration lawyers” who coach applicants on how to game the system. He says massive increases in asylum claims at the southwest border are proof it is being taken advantage of.
Human rights activists say the rise in applications simply shows how dangerous Central America has become. They have pleaded with the administration to maintain the program so the U.S. can continue being a global beacon for the oppressed.
Sessions disagreed and issued new directives that would make it more difficult for victims of domestic violence and gang activity to win entry to the U.S. “The asylum statute is not a general hardship statute,” he said, announcing the change that could affect tens of thousands of applicants.
Travel ban
The first major move from Trump was his controversial travel ban, which the president signed into effect a week into his tenure.
Trump said the temporary ban on immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries was needed to give his administration time to overhaul the country’s vetting systems to ensure terrorists don’t infiltrate the U.S. through legal channels. Critics blasted it as nothing more than the “Muslim ban” he called for during his presidential campaign.
The ban has been shot down by federal courts, revived in different forms by the administration, allowed to go into effect in limited fashion by the Supreme Court, and remains the subject of a legal challenge.
The latest version, which targets nearly 150 million residents of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, is back before the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule sometime this summer.
Refugee program
The president has been able to severely limit the admission of refugees, just as foreign countries are overwhelmed by the largest global migrant crisis in decades.
Despite court rulings against him, Trump was able to halt the Refugee Resettlement Program program for seven months last year. Once it restarted in October, the Department of Homeland Security said it would conduct “extreme vetting” of people using the program.
“People are going to come into our country. We want people to come in. But they’ve got to come ... legally.” President Trump On campaign trail in 2016
Trump also lowered the annual cap on refugee admissions to 45,000 — the lowest figure since Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980. And it seems unlikely that the administration will even reach that number.
Temporary Protected Status
One of the largest groups of legal immigrants hit by Trump’s efforts have been those legally living and working in the U.S. under the Temporary Protected Status program, which allows people from countries ravaged by war and natural disasters to remain in the U.S. until their countries recover.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has been cutting down the program, arguing it has outlived its mandate and declaring that the countries have recovered enough to welcome back their citizens.
Nielsen has now cut TPS for El Salva- dor, Honduras, Haiti, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan, which represents 98% of the 310,000 people covered by the program. That means enrollees from those countries, many of whom have legally lived in the U.S. for nearly 30 years, must return home in the coming months or risk becoming undocumented immigrants.
Fewer visas
The White House has also been on a quest to end “chain migration,” a term used to describe the long-standing practice of family immigration to the United States.
The White House says the practice allows foreigners to sponsor too many extended relatives for permanent placement in the U.S. Critics argue it’s unfair to ask immigrants to leave behind their parents, brothers, sisters and other relatives who would be cut out by the White House proposals.
Congress hasn’t moved on that plan, but the administration has still lowered the number of legal immigrants.
The only area the administration has increased the number of visas is the H2B program, which is used for nonagricultural, seasonal guest workers.
DACA
Up until last year, nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children had legal status to live and work in the U.S. That has resulted in much debate in Washington, but the only concrete step taken so far came from Trump when he ended the program in September.
The Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program remains active after federal judges who ruled the Trump administration used flawed legal reasoning to end it.
The fate of those DREAMers also will be decided by the Supreme Court, which could take the case in the coming months.
The Department of Justice argues that the program was illegal from the start. Immigration lawyers and professors around the country disagree, saying a president is well within his rights to exempt some classes of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
If the Supreme Court sides with the Trump administration, it could be up to Congress to find a rare compromise to save the DREAMers.