Let's talk about the revocation of the Muslim ban. Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. If you've been following me for a long time, you know that the Muslim ban is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. As someone who converted to Islam years ago, I've always been troubled by President Trump's Muslim ban, the ban that prohibited immigrants from many Muslim countries from coming to the United States. It was a blanket ban. It had no individualized assessment.
It was completely illegal, contrary to our values. And the Muslim ban has been challenged over and over and over. We have sued over the ban ourselves, and we've seen some success, some failures. It's been very difficult. Well, Joseph Biden became president on Wednesday, January 20th, and one of the first proclamations he signed was the proclamation on ending discriminatory bans on entry to the United States. Now, you'll see that I'm sitting at my desk today. I'm not at my usual backdrop.
And the reason for that is because I'm going to go over the proclamation little by little, and I want to share with you my thoughts as I do. This proclamation was signed on January 20th. It was one of the first proclamations that President Biden signed. I want to read you a little bit of it, and then I'm going to go through it and let you know what I think it means. The first part of the proclamation says, "The United States was built on a foundation of religious freedom and tolerance, a principle, enshrined in the United States Constitution.
Nevertheless, the previous administration enacted a number of executive orders and presidential proclamations that prevented certain individuals from entering the United States, first from primarily Muslim countries, and later from largely African countries. These actions are a stain on our national conscience and are inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faith and no faith at all. Beyond contravening our values, these executive orders and proclamations have undermined our national security.
They have jeopardized our global network of alliances and partnerships and are a moral blight that has dulled the power of our example the world over." And I think that's a good point is that our standing in the world has really taken a hit. You might recall President Trump derisively talking about people coming to the United States from "shit hole" countries and how sanctimonious and smug and racist he was. Well, as the proclamation says, these are just plain wrong.
Now, Biden makes clear that they're going to take all security threats seriously, but he does go ahead under his authority in the Immigration and Nationality Act and starts by revoking several executive orders, one Executive Order 13780, and three presidential proclamations. He directs the Secretary of State to tell all embassies and consulates consistent with our laws and visa processing procedures and in consideration of coronavirus to resume visa processing in a manner consistent with the revocation of the order.
He also orders the Secretary of State to do research and to find the number of visa applicants who are being considered for a waiver under these proclamations and a plan for expeditiously adjudicating their pending visa applications. What that means is he's saying for those people who were eligible for a waiver, the state department is supposed to put those on a priority. That's great news. He wants to know the number of people who were subject to it.
A proposal to allow the individuals whose immigrant visas were denied on the basis of the suspension and restrictions created by the proclamations that these people are to at least consider reopening these immigrant visa applications to allow these people to come. A plan to ensure that visa applicants are not prejudice as a result of a previous visa denial to the suspension and restriction on entry imposed by the proclamation. Basically he's going to try to undo on a case by case basis the damage that was done by these proclamations.
They are also going to reevaluate the effectiveness of this "extreme vetting," including the much hated DS-5535, which is that form that immigrants were being asked to complete, to list all their social media handles, all their email addresses, and a whole lot of invasive stuff that is not designed to authoritarianism, but rather to make life hard for immigrants. It's an exciting time. We'll be glad to see the state department start to implement this new proclamation, which is undoing the proclamations of President Trump.
Hopefully the signing of this proclamation will be the first step in dismantling many of the proclamations that the president had regarding immigration. Of course, the one we're concerned about right now is the one that's banning the parents of U.S. citizens, the spouses of green card holders, the family members of green card holders and other legally eligible visa categories from coming to the United States. We'll keep an eye on that, and we'll let you know as soon as we hear about it. But for now, the Muslim ban is dead.
We're excited about that, and we're looking forward to getting things back to normal at the state department. The state department has been wrecked by that fool Mike Pompeo and President Trump's abysmal foreign policy shenanigans. And we look forward to America restoring its role in the world and in processing immigration visas properly. Hope you liked this video. If you want to get a hold of us, you can call us 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.
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