Backlogs in some immigrant-visa categories are 50 or even times higher than they were four years ago, at the start of the Trump administration. Some of the backlogs are due to restrictions imposed in response to the Covid pandemic. In a policy reversal just Thursday, the State Department said that in places that are subject to regional pandemic travel restrictions, it will now let people seeking immigrant and fiancee visas go ahead and apply.
Then, too, the effects of a Trump-era freeze on State Department hiring have left its consular sections short-staffed. Meanwhile, Biden has come under fire from Democrats for not, as of Friday, raising the refugee cap for this fiscal year to 62,, as his administration proposed back in February.
Biden has revoked immigration restrictions ranging from a travel ban targeting mostly Muslim-majority countries to, on April 1, reversing a policy under which certain asylum or immigration applications were rejected if the applicant had left any blank spaces on their forms. But immigrants and asylum seekers are discovering that the effects of the obstacles the Trump administration erected are likely to continue choking the flow into the US of legal immigrants and asylum seekers well into next year.
The Trump administration locked all those locks. To understand the challenges, consider the visa process. In March , citing the Covid pandemic, the State Department suspended routine visa services at embassies and consulates around the world. The State Department interpreted the bar on entry as also stopping it from issuing most immigrant visas, according to lawsuits against the agency.
Although, by July, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began letting consulates and embassies reopen for limited visa operations at the discretion of their local chiefs of mission, most stayed closed for all but emergency services, State Department legal filings show.
