Tuesday, February 23, 2021
Since the Biden administration took office, Executive Orders (EO) on immigration have been rolling out, reviewing and undoing some of the previous administration’s policies. Each of these EOs has widespread repercussions on different immigrant communities and families living inside and outside the United States. As the White House reviews or studies immigration policies, activists for immigrants throughout Pennsylvania hope for positive reforms from the Biden administration.
Biden’s EO on the Family Separation Policy
One EO passed by the Biden administration creates a task force to address the harms of the family separation policy, which separated parents and their children as they arrived at the border. President Biden wrote in the order, “[m]y administration condemns the human tragedy that occurred when our immigration laws were used to intentionally separate children from their parents.”
KEYSTONE CROSSROADS The Biden administration’s new executive orders on immigration seek to address some of the last president’s most controversial policies, and will have repercussions for immigrant communities and families in detention across Pennsylvania.
In each of three orders, the White House created a process to review or study some of those policies rather than change them right away. Coming off of the four years of fast-moving policy changes during the Trump administration, local immigrants and activists have greeted Biden’s more measured approach with a mixture of hope and cynicism.
“We hope that it will be a good change, that it will help us, it will help others,” said Yaroub Al-Obaidi, an Iraqi refugee in the Philadelphia-area who has been hoping to reunite with his elderly parents for more than five years.
WHYY
By
President Joe Biden signs an executive order in the State Dining Room of the White House, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The Biden administration’s new executive orders on immigration seek to address some of the last president’s most controversial policies, and will have repercussions for immigrant communities and families in detention across Pennsylvania.
In each of three orders, the White House created a process to review or study some of those policies rather than change them right away. Coming off of the four years of fast-moving policy changes during the Trump administration, local immigrants and activists have greeted Biden’s more measured approach with a mixture of hope and cynicism.