HERE'S HOPING FOR A RESET TO THE OBAMA ERA POST BIDEN INAUGURATION

Immigration attorneys have been holding their collective breaths since the November 3, 2020 election in which it has become clearly apparent that President Elect, Joe Biden won the electoral college decisively. We will likely exhale on Jan 20, 2021 at the end of the new President's inauguration ceremony.

Why the relief? Over President Donald Trump's almost 4 years in office, he ha attacked legal immigration to the United States relentlessly, issuing executive orders and regulations which sought to bring the flow of new immigrants to our nation to a trickle. He has attacked decades of established procedure and precedent on asylum jurisprudence to make it not only increasingly difficult for asylum seekers to prevail in their asylum claims, but to require asylum seekers arriving at our Southern border to await their day in Court on their asylum claims in Mexico under squalid and dangerous conditions, instead of in the United States. Had Trump been victorious in this past election, we would reasonably have expected an even more emboldened President, who would have cast any remaining pretence about addressing unlawful immigration aside, and brought a wrecking ball to what remains of our processes of orderly immigration to the United States.

Once President Elect Biden is sworn into office, I am hoping for a flurry of executive actions rescinding the most abusive and anti-immigrant measures taken by the Trump administration. Biden has promised that he would immediately rescind Trump's Muslim ban, and I would hope that he would also do away with: a recent "public charge" regulation which has made it far more difficult for poor immigrants to complete their immigration to the US; the entire policy of making asylum seekers at the Southern border, wait in Mexico for their hearings; a regulation which makes it more difficult and creates a longer wait for asylum seekers to apply for employment authorization documents; the use of Covid as a pretext to close down lawful immigrant visa processing at US embassies abroad; bad faith rejections of immigration applications and the issuance of frivolouse Requests For Evidence (RFEs) which now rules the day in our immigration practices. I further hope that he would immediately restore all aspects of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) for the dreamers (including their right to travel).

I am also hoping for an overall return to America's commitment to civil rights, which was cast aside in so many ways during the Trump regime.

Did I say I'm relieved?