United States President, Joe Biden has revoked a proclamation issued under the former president Donald Trump’s administration that blocked many green card applicants from entering the United States.
According to a statement from the White House on Wednesday, Biden overturned the ban through an executive order.
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The now-scraped order by Trump, known as Presidential Proclamation 100014, cited a need to protect US jobs amid high unemployment rates caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
However, the current US president has said Trump’s measures separated families and “does not advance the interests of the United States.”
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In his proclamation, President Joe Biden stressed that his predecessor’s proclamation, “does not advance the interests of the United States” and that “to the contrary, it harms the United States, including by preventing certain family members of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents from joining their families here”.
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He added;
It also harms industries in the United States that utilise talent from around the world. And it harms individuals who were selected to receive the opportunity to apply for, and those who have likewise received, immigrant visas through the Fiscal Year 2020 Diversity Visa Lottery.
Biden has pledged to reverse many of Trump’s hardline immigration policies and defend the naturalization process for green-card holders and support family-based immigration.
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He also has said he wants to preserve “preferences for diversity in the current system,” because Trump has sought to eliminate what is commonly known as the diversity visa lottery.
The lottery ensures that the United States draws immigrants from everywhere instead of the small number of countries that are overrepresented in family and employment-based immigrant visas.
