What should I do if my family member is affected by one of Trump's bans? Hi, I'm Jim Hacking, immigration lawyer, practicing law throughout the United States at our office here in St. Louis, Missouri. Since he took office in January 27, President Trump has issued almost 200 executive orders or presidential proclamations impacting immigration, according to the Migration Policy Institute. And many of these have resulted in embassies refusing to issue visas. So we know that Trump has banned people from some predominantly Muslim countries. We know that the president has now banned people based on COVID from certain countries that are suffering large outbreaks of the coronavirus. And we know that the Trump administration has banned the spouses of green card holders, H1B visas, all kinds of new people that are trying to come to the United States, spouses of LPRs, parents of US citizens, adult children of US citizens, brothers, and sisters of US citizens.
McCotter, one of our readers and one of our YouTube subscribers, asked us to make a video about Jim, what should we do if we have a case that's affected by that? Well, so here's what I'm telling people. If you are married to someone who is from one of the predominantly Muslim countries that Trump has banned, like Yemen or Libya, places like that, the ban only affects the embassy's ability to issue a visa. So our advice for any of these people is just keep filing. So if you're a US citizen and you want to sponsor your brother, you should still go ahead and file it. Those cases take years and years, and Trump's ban might not be in effect at that time. If it's your parent, you should definitely go ahead and file.
And the reason for this, I think, is that you want to make sure that you're in the front of the line when things open again. So right now the ban affects everybody in that class of beneficiaries. So all parents of US citizens are halted. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't file an I-130. You want to get the process started. So to me, time is relative. And I know that it's easy for me because I'm sitting here in my office in St. Louis. I'm not separated from my family member. But to me, I always say to myself, well, my clients should get their case on file so that if and when things do become available, they'll be closer to the front of the line than they are right now. Waiting for these bans to get lifted is not the way to go. I think the better play is to keep your application filing.
So if you file with USCIS, they'll still process it. If you file with the National Visa Center, they'll still process it. And the embassy will continue processing up until the time of actually issuing the visa. You never know when one of these bans is going to get struck down, and you want to be in that position to jump in that window if it opens up. So that's really the approach. If there's a window that's currently closed, you want to wait and stand by the window, waiting for it to open so that you can jump into the country if that ban is lifted. If President Trump does not get reelected, some of the bans, President Biden has said that he will eliminate on day one. And there's a lot that a new president could do to undo a lot of this damage that Trump has done.
So of course, everything's going to turn on the election, but you want to be in that position to keep your case moving and file it so they're at the front of the line or as close to the front of line as you can get.
Hope this makes sense. I was a little bit rambly, but I think you get the point. If you have questions, 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 that you please share it out on social so that you get updates whenever we make videos, just like this one. Thanks a lot. Have a great day.
