On Sunday, as President Trump continued to tweet his opposition to the election results, President-Elect Joe Biden moved ahead with setting up his transition team for when he expects to take office in January.
Biden’s team have set up a website, BuildBackBetter.com to outline their administration priorities.
“The transition—like the Biden-Harris administration to follow—will prioritize the following core values: diversity of ideology and background; talent to address society’s most complex challenges; integrity and the highest ethical standards to serve the American people and not special interests; and transparency to garner trust at every stage,” the website states.
With Biden set to swear in on January 20, his work will be cut out for him if he wants to deliver on his promise to reverse many of Trump’s key executive actions.
This includes reinstating the US into the Paris Agreement on climate change, which America formally left on November 5 this year. That day, Biden tweeted, “Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it.”
Another move would be to rejoin the World Health Organisation, which Trump’s regime exited from in July. Biden has promised to rejoin the WHO on the very first day he takes office.
A topmost priority would be to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, which has reached unprecedented proportions in the US, which clocked over 125,000 cases a day on Friday.
Biden has promised a seven-point plan to tackle the virus, including doubling the number of drive-in testing centres, using the Defence Production Act to ramp up the production of PPE and other equipment, ensure a vaccine is delivered to every American free of charge and set up a Pandemic Testing Board similar to that of Roosevelt’s War Production Board.
According to a Washington Post report, Biden also plans to repeal the ban on immigration from many Muslim-majority countries that Trump passed in 2017, which affects immigration from Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Further restrictions were later places on the issuing of visas in Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, North Korea, Sudan, Tanzania and Venezuela.
In addition, over 500,000 undocumented migrants from India could find a path to citizenship, as reported by PTI, citing a Biden policy document.
"He [Biden] will immediately begin working with Congress to pass legislative immigration reform that modernises our system, with a priority on keeping families together by providing a roadmap to citizenship for nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants -- including more than 500,000 from India," it said.
The Biden administration will support family-based immigration and preserve family unification as a core principle of the US' immigration system, which includes reducing the family visa backlog, it said.
"And, he will increase the number of refugees we welcome into this country by setting the annual global refugee admissions target to 125,000 and seek to raise it over time commensurate with our responsibility, our values, and the unprecedented global need. He will also work with Congress to establish a minimum admissions number of 95,000 refugees annually," the policy document said.
Biden will remove the uncertainty for Dreamers by reinstating the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) programme and explore all legal options to protect their families from inhumane separation. And, he will end workplace raids and protect other sensitive locations from immigration enforcement actions, it said.
Launched by the Obama administration, the DACA is an immigration policy that allows some individuals with unlawful presence in the US after being brought to the country as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit in the US. DACA recipients are often referred to as Dreamers. To be eligible for the programme, recipients cannot have felonies or serious misdemeanours on their records.
The Trump administration moved to end the DACA programme in 2017 and was ultimately blocked by the Supreme Court from doing so this year. Even so, his administration scaled back the programme and pledged to end it, leaving thousands of the programme's beneficiaries in limbo.
Biden will also restore and defend the naturalisation process for green card holders, the policy document said.
Employment-based visas, also known as green cards, allow migrants to gain lawful permanent residence in the US in order to engage in skilled work.
"He (Biden) will increase the number of visas offered for permanent, work-based immigration based on macroeconomic conditions and exempt from any cap recent graduates of PhD programmes in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields," it said.
"He will support first reforming the temporary visa system for high-skill, specialty jobs to protect wages and workers, then expanding the number of visas offered and eliminating the limits on employment-based green cards by country, which have kept so many Indian families in waiting for too long," the document stated.
The Biden administration will support family-based immigration and preserve family unification as a core principle of the US' immigration system, which includes reducing the family visa backlog, it said.
"And, he will increase the number of refugees we welcome into this country by setting the annual global refugee admissions target to 125,000 and seek to raise it over time commensurate with our responsibility, our values, and the unprecedented global need. He will also work with Congress to establish a minimum admissions number of 95,000 refugees annually," the policy document said.
Biden will remove the uncertainty for Dreamers by reinstating the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) programme and explore all legal options to protect their families from inhumane separation. And, he will end workplace raids and protect other sensitive locations from immigration enforcement actions, it said.
Launched by the Obama administration, the DACA is an immigration policy that allows some individuals with unlawful presence in the US after being brought to the country as children to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation and become eligible for a work permit in the US. DACA recipients are often referred to as Dreamers. To be eligible for the programme, recipients cannot have felonies or serious misdemeanours on their records.
The Trump administration moved to end the DACA programme in 2017 and was ultimately blocked by the Supreme Court from doing so this year. Even so, his administration scaled back the programme and pledged to end it, leaving thousands of the programme's beneficiaries in limbo.
Biden will also restore and defend the naturalisation process for green card holders, the policy document said.
Employment-based visas, also known as green cards, allow migrants to gain lawful permanent residence in the US in order to engage in skilled work.
"He (Biden) will increase the number of visas offered for permanent, work-based immigration based on macroeconomic conditions and exempt from any cap recent graduates of PhD programmes in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields," it said.
"He will support first reforming the temporary visa system for high-skill, specialty jobs to protect wages and workers, then expanding the number of visas offered and eliminating the limits on employment-based green cards by country, which have kept so many Indian families in waiting for too long," the document stated.
With inputs from PTI
