Justice prepares to shape US immigration policy this year

Judges in the United States will issue important immigration rulings in 2023 and will therefore play a key role in shaping the nation’s immigration policy.

Congress has not comprehensively reviewed US immigration laws since 1990, notes Professor Stephen Yale-Loehr of Cornell University Law School, who told the voice of america that efforts by subsequent administrations to overhaul the fiat immigration system are always accompanied by legal disputes.

“The courts are not a good way to manage immigration,” the professor concluded.

These are some of the main cases before the courts.

United States vs. Texas

In 2022, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the US v. Texas, a lawsuit in which the Republican-led states of Louisiana and Texas argued that the Biden Administration’s enforcement priorities are illegal.

The dispute arose out of a September 2021 directive from the Department of Homeland Security that focused deportation efforts on people considered an “egregious threat to public safety” or who had committed acts of espionage or terrorism. However, anyone in the US without documentation is still at risk of deportation.

Yale-Loehr said that based on oral arguments, it is not clear how the court will rule.

Title 42

Supreme Court justices will also decide the fate of Title 42. The court will hear arguments in the case in February.

Title 42 is a public health policy that allows for the immediate removal of migrants during public health emergencies. The use of the health order, which immigration advocates say is no longer necessary, began in March 2020 and has led to a backlog of migrants in Mexico seeking asylum in the United States.

In November 2022, a US District Court judge ordered Biden to lift Title 42 restrictions on the US-Mexico border. The case before the Supreme Court is about whether states can challenge the decision of the US District Court.

Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project, said Title 42 is likely to be a pending issue in 2023, depending on how the Court rules. Supreme.

“There were some disagreements when Title 42 was first implemented about whether it was possibly justified by public health concerns. But at this point, I think no one is seriously suggesting that there is any public health justification for Title 42,” Jadwat said.

DHAKA

The Biden Administration revised DACA in 2022, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, by putting it through the formal rule-making process to increase your chances of satisfying arguments that it wasn’t created correctly. Since its creation in 2012, it has protected from deportation hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, known as dreamers or “dreamers”.

In 2018, Texas and other Republican-led states sued the federal government, arguing that DACA hurts states financially because they are legally required to provide education, health care and other services to all residents of their states, including undocumented immigrants.

The states further argue that only Congress has the authority to grant immigration benefits.

The case was filed in the District Court for Southern Texas, where US District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled that the program is illegal but allowed it to continue for current beneficiaries. That ruling was appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which sent the case back to the lower court for further review. However, the court upheld Hanen’s ruling that DACA is illegal.

Hanen has yet to schedule a new hearing.

Diversity Visa Cases

Goodluck Vs Biden combines two cases in which tens of thousands of people are fighting for the immigrant visas they were granted in 2020 and 2021 under the diversity visa program. The visas expired before the winners could receive authorization to travel to the US for reasons related to the pandemic.

The diversity visa program, commonly known as the green card lottery, is authorized by the 1990 Immigration Act to increase diversity among immigrants in the United States.

Visa lottery winners sued and eventually US District Court Judge Amit Mehta ordered the Biden administration to set aside more than 7,000 expired diversity visas for winners whose applications were not prioritized for processing. after US consulates reopened as the pandemic subsided.

Immigration attorney Curtis Morrison told the VOA that the federal courts have told the Biden administration that it needs to put things right for these thousands of visa applicants and their families.

The Goodluck case is now before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Oral arguments took place in September after the State Department appealed Mehta’s order. Diversity visa litigation can affect more than 30,000 people.

“The department believes that the courts misinterpreted the law by finding that the department’s policies were unlawful and that the courts exceeded their authority in ordering the department to process and issue diversity visas beyond the statutory time frame,” according to the statement. Web of the Department of State.

Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channel Youtube and activate notifications, or follow us on social networks: Facebook, Twitter and instagram.