PTI
Washington
US President Joe Biden has signed three executive orders that he said would lead to a “fair, orderly and humane” legal immigration system and also undo his predecessor Donald Trump’s hardline policies that ripped children from the arms of their families.
The review of the existing policies and the subsequent recommendations coming from 60 to 180 days from various federal agencies are likely to benefit hundreds and thousands of Indian professionals in realising their dream of citizenship of the United States.
“I’m not making new law, I’m eliminating bad policy,” Biden said on Tuesday at the White House, flanked by Vice President Kamala Harris and newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, of the stream of executive orders he has signed as President.
“This is about how America’s safer, stronger, more prosperous when we have a fair, orderly, and humane legal immigration system,” Biden told reporters.
He said his executive orders are aimed to strengthen the immigration system, building on the executive actions he took on day one to protect the Dreamers, and the Muslim ban, and to better manage of the country’s borders.
“The federal government should develop welcoming strategies that promote integration, inclusion and citizenship, and it should embrace the full participation of the newest Americans in our democracy,” he said in one of the three executive orders.
“Today we are going to work to undo the moral and national shame of the previous administration that literally, not figuratively, ripped children from the arms of their families, their mothers and fathers at the border and with no plan, none whatsoever to reunify the children who are still in custody and their parents,” he said.
The first executive order was on creating a task force, chaired by the Secretary of Homeland Security, to reunify families, which will work across governments to find parents and children separated by the prior administration.
In an attempt to deter illegal immigration, Trump’s administration separated undocumented adults from children as they crossed the US-Mexico border. Uner this, over 5,500 families were separated and the parents of more than 600 children still have not been located, according to US media reports.
