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The White House
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in accordance with section 207(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (the “Act”) (8 U.S.C. 1157(b)), and after appropriate consultation with the Congress, I have determined that subsequent to the signing of Presidential Determination 2021-02 on October 27, 2020 (Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2021) (PD 2021-02), an unforeseen emergency refugee situation now exists due to new or increasing political violence, repression, atrocities, or humanitarian crises in countries including Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Hong Kong and Xinjiang (China), South Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela, as well as changing conditions caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. I have further determined that the allocation of admissions among refugees of humanitarian concern set forth in PD 2021-02 pre
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in accordance with section 207(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (the “Act”) (8 U.S.C. 1157(b)), and after appropriate consultation with the Congress, I have determined that subsequent to the signing of Presidential Determination 2021-02 on October 27, 2020 (Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2021) (PD 2021-02), an unforeseen emergency refugee situation now exists due to new or increasing political violence, repression, atrocities, or humanitarian crises in countries including Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Hong Kong and Xinjiang (China), South Sudan, Syria, and Venezuela, as well as changing conditions caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. I have further determined that the allocation of admissions among refugees of humanitarian concern set forth in PD 2021-02 prevents the United States Refugee A
Biden s Executive Actions: President Unilaterally Changes Immigration Policy
By Robert Law
on March 15, 2021
Robert Law is the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies. He would like to thank Josh Timko for his extensive research and analysis that informed the substance of this Backgrounder on the Biden immigration executive actions.
President Biden issued over three dozen executive actions during his first month in office, many of them focused on immigration. Some of the immigration executive actions revoked Trump administration immigration policies and introduced sweeping new policies, while others were more messaging documents with little-to-no practical impact. While the pace of immigration-specific executive actions has slowed recently, it is expected that the Biden administration will continue to rely on executive actions as a tool to reshape immigration policy throughout his term. This
The Challenge of Climate Change Migration
As the United States builds a strategy that can address the security implications of climate change migration, it might instead seek to center its policy prescriptions on the most vulnerable in the country.
Over the past decade, an average of 21.5 million people annually have been forced to move due to the impacts of extreme weather. That’s three times as many people as have been affected by conflict, and almost nine times as many as those who have fled persecution. These numbers are expected to increase even more as the impacts of climate change grow and intersect with the effects of conflict, governance challenges, resource deprivation, and other manifestations of instability and insecurity.
President Biden’s Immigration Executive Actions: A Recap
President Biden signs executive orders on immigration on Feb. 2, 2021, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
In his first weeks in office, President Biden issued several executive actions focused on reevaluating and unwinding the panoply of protectionist immigration policies former President Trump set in place through executive branch action. Some actions, like the Task Force on the Reunification of Families, focus on repairing past harms. Others, like Biden’s executive order on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), are largely symbolic and serve as a clear repudiation of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda. While the executive actions are a meaningful first step, their scope is limited for a number of reasons.