Vol 4 – Issue 4 by Catalyst

Author:Catalyst
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-25T20:36:12+00:00

# Sarah Pierce and Jessica Bolter, “Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System: A Catalog of Changes Under the Trump Presidency,” Migration Policy Institute, July 2020.

# The Trump administration lowered the ceiling on refugee resettlement for fiscal year 2017 from 110,000 (a number set by the Obama administration) to 50,000, then lowered it again in subsequent years to 18,000. This number was set prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (Migration Policy Institute, “U.S. Annual Refugee Resettlement Ceilings and Number of Refugees Admitted, 1980-Present,” 2020). Actual refugee admissions declined by 77 percent in the first two years of the Trump administration, from 97,000 in 2016 to 22,471 in 2018. Notably, 2018 was the first year since the passage of the Refugee Act in 1980 that the United States was not the world’s leader in refugee resettlement (Jynnah Radford and Phillip Connor, “Canada Now Leads the World in Refugee Resettlement, Surpassing the U.S.,” Pew Research Center, June 19, 2019). To curtail the number of migrants permitted to remain in the United States while awaiting adjudication of their asylum claims, the Trump administration initiated a number of bilateral programs that would require asylum applicants to either await adjudication in other countries or be deported if they had failed to meet newly imposed requirements. To obtain the cooperation of partner countries like Mexico and Guatemala, the Trump administration threatened economic sanctions, including imposing tariffs, taxing remittances, and banning travel (Pierce and Bolter, “Dismantling and Reconstructing”).

# This has been pointed out by many observers of immigration in the United States. See, e.g., Bill Ong Hing, American Presidents, Deportations, and Human Rights Violations: From Carter to Trump (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

# The statutory provision is 8 U.S. Code §1373, which forbids state and local governments from prohibiting or restricting communication with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the precursor to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

# White House, “Presidential Proclamation 10014 of April 22, 2020: Suspension of Entry of Immigrants Who Present a Risk to the United States Labor Market during the Economic Recovery Following the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Outbreak,” Federal Register 85, no. 81 (April 27, 2020): 23441–44; White House, “Proclamation 10052 of June 22, 2020: Suspension of Entry of Immigrants and Nonimmigrants Who Present a Risk to the United States Labor Market During the Economic Recovery Following the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Outbreak,” Federal Register 85, no. 123 (June 25, 2020): 38263–67; Pierce and Bolter, “Dismantling and Reconstructing” (finding that, by mid-2020, the Trump administration had imposed travel bans on thirty-one countries in response to COVID-19).

The term “immigration” in American law technically refers to visas for permanent migration. “Nonimmigrant” visas are issued to people who enter under temporary migration categories.

# 115th US Congress, Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment Act, S. 354 (2017).

# US Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, 2016, 2019. These numbers include new arrivals with immigrant visas (i.e., green card recipients, including refugee visas) and all persons entering the United States with nonimmigrant visas (issued form I-94), excluding diplomats, temporary visitors for tourism or business, transit visa holders, and commuter students.

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