What will happen to all of Trump's travel bans?
Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, Immigration Lawyer practicing law throughout the United States out of our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. You've heard me talk many times about what an incompetent President Donald Trump was, how he wasn't able to get jack squat passed through Congress when it comes to immigration or really anything. If you think about it, what legislative victories does Donald Trump have as he leaves the White House in shame and dishonor?
None, other than a tax cut for rich people, that's really the only thing that he ever got passed in Congress. That and appointing a bunch of radical right-wing judges. But when it comes to immigration, he was not able to get very much done at all, but one of the things he was able to do was sign a bunch of executive orders to ban certain classes of people in the United States.
I'll never forget the weekends after he took office and Steve Bannon and Steve Miller wrote up a little executive order, banning Muslims or people from predominantly Muslim countries, seven predominantly Muslim countries, in January of 2016 from coming to the United States. And you'll recall all the havoc and chaos at the airports when lawyers and well-meaning people were trying to figure out where these immigrants were, why they weren't being let in. There was all kinds of confusion because nobody even told customs and border patrol how to enforce this new rule or who it applied to.
And we'll all recall that since that time, Trump has signed more executive orders to ban different classes of people. He, in 2020, banned the spouses of Green Card holders, the children of Green Card holders, the parents of US citizens. And he assigned, I think about seven or eight types of bans overall, and these are just by the signature on a piece of paper that he then declares that certain classes of immigrants were unable to come to the United States.
And of course the most egregious, I think, were the Muslim bans, one, two, and three. The one and two got struck down, three was allowed to stand by the Supreme Court, and it really gave the president way too much power in keeping entire classes of people. There were no individualized assessments as to whether or not the applicants should be able to come to the United States.
So it is expected that President Joseph Biden will sign new executive orders on the day he's sworn, ending the Muslim ban, ending the travel ban for spouses of Green Card holders and we're going to see the embassies being asked to start issuing these visas again. It's really an exciting time. I think it's a much fairer time. People who shouldn't be coming the United States will still not be coming to United States, but people who should be coming the United States who didn't do anything wrong will be allowed to reunite with their family.
So there's been great sadness in the emails we receive and in the delays that people have had in their cases, and we're glad to see that that's going to change. President Biden, or President-elect Biden has already promised to undo those rules, and we're excited about that. So get those bans out the door and immigration will start to go back to normal. It's going to take time for everything to work through the system. So we'll just have to wait and see, but it's a good thing.
If you have questions about the bans, give us a call at (314) 961-8200. You can email us at [email protected]. Be sure to join us in our Facebook group, which is called Immigrant Home. And if you liked this video, we ask you to please share it out on social and you subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you get updates whenever we make videos just like this one. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
