Donald Trump was famous for his anti-immigrant rhetoric even during the election campaign
As Voice of America notes, Donald Trump doomed himself to marches and demonstrations back on January 27, when he signed his first executive order as US president, fulfilling what he promised during the election campaign. "We will stop illegal migration, we will deport every foreign criminal," he said then.
According to the order, citizens of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen were banned from entering the US for 90 days. Federal courts reacted to the president's order, and a week later, Judge James Robart from Washington state suspended the directive. Subsequent similar orders suffered the same fate.
Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, recalls that President Trump "signed three immigration orders, and all of them are currently suspended by courts. So the president definitely has a problem with this final step toward implementing his plans."
Donald Trump made his third—and so far last—attempt to restrict entry for citizens of predominantly Muslim countries on October 17. As of now, the order has been suspended by a federal court in Hawaii. "We are very pleased that Judge Watson's ruling came out a few hours before the immigration order 3.0 would have taken effect," says Douglas Chin, Attorney General of Hawaii.
Until September, Lizette Arias from Bolivia watched Trump's migration policy from the sidelines. Then the president canceled the DACA program for children who were once illegally brought to the US by their parents. And now, practically American Lizette could be deported to a country she last visited at four months old. Lizette says: "I don't know what I'll do with my job, with my bank account, I have a car, and I'm not sure if I can drive it when I'm left without documents."
DACA does not grant citizenship, but it allows working and living legally in the US. The president decided: let Congress now decide the fate of the "Dreamers," as program participants are called in America. And they set a deadline—until March. Lizette and another eight hundred thousand like her are waiting.
Starting this Monday, another category of migrants has been added to them. This time, the Department of Homeland Security decided to review the Temporary Protected Status, which allowed people from certain countries to live and work in the US while their homeland recovers from a disaster. The first to be affected were immigrants from Nicaragua and Honduras.
Activist Rammel Sandino says that for Nicaraguans, the status will be valid for twelve months, and for Hondurans, six, until the government decides what to do next. "Understand," he emphasizes, "most of these people have lived in the US for 20-30 years, they have given a lot to this country, they built our roads and bridges, homes and offices, they are part of this nation."
The good news is that, despite the unpredictability of the presidential administration, imagining and, most importantly, implementing mass deportation will be very difficult.
Ismail Shakhtakhtinsky, an immigration attorney, comments: "They need a larger budget to hire more judges, more immigration court buildings. Currently, immigration courts are so backlogged that the deportation process for one person can take up to four years."
But the process of obtaining a green card may now become more complicated. In particular, for those who believe in and play the lottery for immigrants from different countries.
Recently, Donald Trump stated: "I intend to ask Congress to immediately begin the process of eliminating this program. It only sounds nice, but it is bad." Donald Trump made this statement after the terrorist attack in New York, when it turned out that the driver of the truck that plowed into a crowd was a citizen of Uzbekistan who had won a green card.
Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, believes that "giving people the opportunity to live legally in the US solely based on a lottery is ridiculous. For two reasons: first, it does not serve American interests at all—there is no guarantee that winners will come here to develop the country, and it is unfair to all other people who applied and lost."
Ukrainian Maksym Shiyan disagrees with this assertion. For him, winning a green card was the first step toward the American dream. He went from being a waiter to a financier on Wall Street and a sales manager at a large media company. He says that because of his move, the US treasury did not lose a single cent. And he pays his taxes regularly.
"If you came on a green card, you are not a refugee, so the state offers nothing. I have never been a freeloader, except maybe during the first year when I was entitled to free insurance. I took advantage of that," he says.
Experts say: the lottery is only 50,000 green cards annually. The total number of potential US residents is about one million per year. And Donald Trump cannot change this number.
Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, says: "There is a law—the Immigration and Nationality Act. It regulates the number of green cards that can be issued annually. And the president cannot influence this number in any way. Only Congress can."
But refugees fall within the president's sphere of influence. And for the next year, the quota for them has already been halved, to 45,000. Supporters of Trump's policies argue: every step he takes in immigration policy is another attempt to make the US a safer country.
Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, reminds: "Immigration issues are decided by Congress, and President Obama often ignored its directives. Now President Trump is simply following the law. I am confident that the president is trying to protect both U.S. citizens and legal immigrants."
Both supporters and opponents of Trump agree on one thing – the U.S. urgently needs immigration reform, as the current law is outdated in every respect.