Presidential Executive Order: Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States
In response to an appeals court’s ruling against his previous executive order barring travel from several Muslim countries, President Trump has issued another executive order that has scaled back parts of the original order and left others unchanged.
The President’s new order has a number of important features:
- The order is set to take effect of March 16, 2017
- While it suspends the issuance of visas for people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, Iraq was removed from the list.
- Current visa holders as well as green card holders are exempt from the ban
- Entry into the United States as immigrants or nonimmigrants for the six countries is suspended for 90 days from the date of effect.
- Certain information has been demanded from all foreign governments within 60 days.
- Categories of case-by-case exemptions for the visa issuance suspension are put forth,
- Mandatory interviews at consulates are now mandatory.
The order is applicable to individuals who meet all three of the following criterion:
- Are not present in the United States as of March 16th, 2017,
- Were not in possession of a valid visa at 5 PM Eastern Standard Time on January 1st, 2017, and
- Are not in possession of a valid visa as of the effective date of March 16th, 2017
There are a number of groups identified by the order that have been granted exemption:
- Lawful permanent residents.
- Foreign nationals admitted or paroled in the United States on or after March 16th, 2017.
- Any foreign national with a travel or admission document valid on or after March 16th, 2017.
- Dual nationals where an individual is travelling in a country other than a designated country.
- Foreign nationals travelling on diplomatic or diplomatic type visas. Or
- Foreign nationals granted asylum, refugee status (and they have already been admitted) or granted withholding of removal, advance parole, or protection under the Convention Against Torture.
Consular officers and CBP, in appropriate situations, can grant waivers to permit visa issuance or the entry of a covered foreign national. Examples explicitly names in the order include:
- Individuals previously admitted into the United States for a continuous period of work, study, or other long-term activity, is outside of the U.S. on March 16th, 2017 and seeks to reenter to resume that activity
- An individual who has previously established significant contacts with the United States but is outside the country on the executive order’s effective date for work, study, or other lawful activity
- An individual seeking to enter the U.S. for significant business or professional obligations and denying entry would impair those obligations.
- An individual seeks to enter the United States to visit or reside with a close family member who is a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, or alien lawfully admitted on a valid nonimmigrant visa and denying entry during the suspension period would cause undue hardship.
- An individual who is an infant, young child, adoptee, an individual needing urgent medical care, or someone whose entry is otherwise justified by the special circumstances of the case.
- Individuals employed by, or on behalf of, the United States government (or is a dependent of such an employee) and the employee can document he or she has provided faithful and valuable service to the United States.
- An individual is traveling to the U.S. for purposes related to an international organization.
- An individual is a Canadian landed immigrant
- An individual is travelling as a United States Government-sponsored exchange visitor.
As with the initial executive order which implemented a travel ban, litigation has already been initiated in order to block it from becoming implemented on its effect date of March 16th, 2017.
For more information, view the executive order.
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Trump Announces New Merit-Based Immigration Approach at Congressional Address
Immigration experts were left wondering exactly what he meant when President Trump described a shift toward merit-based immigration. In the President’s address to a joint session of congress, he stated that, “Switching away from this current system of lower skilled immigration, and instead adopting a merit-based system, will have many benefits.”
He went on to elaborate upon the prospective outcomes without elaborating more on his method, “It will save countless dollars, raise workers’ wages, and help struggling families – including immigrant families – enter the middle class.” Noticeably absent from the address were specifics as to what merits he was referring, whether it be education, specialization, filling a gap in the market. The only specific qualification he stated for merit based was that immigrants should financially be self-reliant upon their arrival. While not specifically detailing specific differences in his address, fundamentally it can be viewed that a merit-based immigration system would differ from the American immigration system because the current system issues visas on criterion such as diversity, humanitarian need, employment demands, and family connections. It is yet to be made clear about how these existing provisions will fit into the President’s new plan, but some experts, such as immigration attorney William Stock, view the emphasis placed on merit to be a way of circumventing immigration based on family ties. Mo Goldman, an immigration attorney based in Tucson, believes “what we’ll wind up seeing is a significant reduction in family-based immigration and potentially an elimination of the visa lottery.” The ramifications of such changes could be far reaching, according to Goldman, “It could have a negative impact as far as the need we have in certain areas of our industries. Not everyone who comes here as an immigrant is going to work for Intel.” Data from the National Agriculture Workers survey suggests that 80 percent of agricultural workers are foreign born, suggesting that a broader definition of merit based might be required to fulfill the needs of an economy already utilizing immigration based labor.
Trump did mention the Canadian immigration system as an example for a plan he would like to implement, but it is dealing with real consequences of favoring education criterion for immigration entry. Meghan Benton, a senior policy analyst with Migration Policy Institute, asserted that, “whether or not someone has a particular job is a better determinant (of success) than if they just have a Ph. D. She found, “High-skilled migrants are underemployed, or in some cases, unemployed.” She identified the potential issues that high-skilled workers face, such as language barriers, and unrecognized professional credentials as influential problems that lower skilled workers disproportionately face less. She said that Canada addressed this problem in 2015, when it placed priority on immigrants who already have job offers within the country.
For more information, view the full article.
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