immigration

After tireless advocacy of immigrant communities and advocates, President Biden today fulfilled several campaign promises by sending an immigration bill to Congress and issuing executive orders and memoranda on immigration-related actions. The immigration bill provides a path to citizenship for all 11 million undocumented immigrants and includes the Reuniting Families Act to modernize our immigration system and the No Ban Act -- both priority bills for Asian Americans Advancing Justice and authored by Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chair, Rep. Judy Chu.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) applaud the introduction of the New Way Forward Act by U.S. House Representatives Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, Pramila Jayapal, Karen Bass, and Ayanna Pressley. 

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a final rule making sweeping changes to the "public charge" test that will disproportionately block immigrants of color from obtaining lawful permanent residency, also known as green cards, inhibit immigrant workers and foreign students from extending or changing their visas, and undermine the ability of green card holders to re-enter the U.S. if they have spent more than 6 months abroad. The new rule dramatically expands the public charge ground of exclusion from a limited inquiry into whether an immigrant relies on the government for cash assistance or institutional care to an extraordinarily broad test that will exclude anyone who may use, at any time in the future, one of the supplemental benefits that millions of working Americans rely upon, such as non-emergency Medicaid, food stamps, and subsidized housing.

Today, the parties in Bhattarai v. Nielsen, a case challenging the termination of temporary protected status (TPS) for people from Nepal and Honduras, asked the Court to enter an order temporarily halting termination of TPS for people from those countries. Under the agreement, TPS for Nepal and Honduras—currently slated to end on June 24, 2019 and January 5, 2020, respectively—would remain in place at least until the appeal in Ramos v. Nielsen, another TPS case, is decided.