Joe Biden is on the back end on immigration in the media…
But like his ex-boss President Obama…
President Biden IS ACTUALLY cutting back on legal immigration numbers…
But Biden is having a perception problem on the issue….
Democrats have spent much of the first months of Biden’s presidency attempting to move immigration reform through Congress, but their efforts have been twice batted down by the Senate parliamentarian.
A big part of those efforts is designed at providing protection to millions already in the U.S., shielding them from deportation by ensuring residency and an eventual path to naturalization.
But the close of the fiscal year means more than 200,000 visas will expire without action from Congress.
The government failed to issue some 150,000 family-based visas and as many as 80,000 employment-based visas, according to estimates provided by the State Department in mid-September.
“It doesn’t sound like big deal but what 80,000 visas means is these are people stuck in employment-based or family-based green card backlogs for decades, and they are waiting for their chance to be able to apply,” said Shev Dalal-Dheini with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, noting that the government is just getting to visa applications first initiated in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Also lost at the end of the fiscal year were 40,000 diversity visas, given out via lottery to as many as 55,000 people each year to help diversify the pool of immigrants coming to the U.S. The low processing rate has spurred lawsuits, with a court ordering the State Department to still issue nearly 7,000 from last fiscal year.
And the Biden administration resettled just 11,411 refugees this year, the lowest figure on record. Though the administration had doubts it would reach the 62,500 cap it set after the program atrophied during the Trump administration, the low totals nonetheless mean some 50,000 slots went unused.
“The loss of over 150,000 visas in the family-based category and potentially 80,000 visas in the employment-based category coupled with the record low resettlement of refugees this year equates to one of the sharpest decreases in legal immigration in modern history,”….
Note…
Part of the problem is slow paperwork done by previous administrations also….