Legal immigration in the crosshairs?

Apropos the topic of last month’s article regarding the expected reconfiguration of the US immigration system under the second Trump administration, there are a number of viable control options that immigration hardliners can leverage to impact the country’s legal migration situation even without congressional intervention.

Readers are cautioned that the observations below are by no means certain to take place; they are idle speculation at best.

For starters, consular visa processing is one potent control platform that easily comes to mind.

Assuming that the Trump administration will promptly undertake the necessary personnel changes at all levels of the federal bureaucracy in order to rapidly implement its restrictionist agenda, it can issue a marching order to the US State Department to conduct a more stringent scrutiny of all visa applications worldwide.

Summary denials, for instance, can be employed by consular officers for a variety of reasons, especially on discretionary nonimmigrant visa applications. Reducing the number of interview slots, torpidly pacing interview appointments, and requiring more evidentiary documents than what is legally necessary can also effectively reduce the number of visas issued each year.

Additionally, beefing up the medical screening criteria can also impact the issuance rates of immigrant visas, especially if done in conjunction with more rigorous background security checks. Recalibrating the visa availability meter within the legally permissible thresholds, such as revising the counting methodologies and toying with the inclusion/exclusion criteria, can also be an effectual weapon to slow down fresh migration.

Another potential area of control involves the in-country USCIS adjudication process.

With a few masterful tweaks of the decision-making mechanism, newly hired USCIS personnel with restrictionist mindsets, working hand in hand with veteran employees of similar persuasion, can make life more difficult for people seeking immigration relief in the US.

For instance, by issuing expedited denials or requiring next-to-impossible evidentiary documentation, USCIS officers can increase the financial burden on the applicants. Since filing a motion to reopen or appeal a denial costs thousands of dollars in legal and filing fees, this strategy can effectively cut off post-decision remedies to a large number of applicants, resulting in more adverse decisions and fewer immigrants and non-immigrants in the country.

Also, issuing more requests for evidence (RFE), despite the lower standard of proof in administrative proceedings, along with the imposition of non-extendible deadlines, will deter many applicants from pursuing their cases, resulting in more withdrawals and abandonment. Case processing timelines can also be prolonged indefinitely, ensuring that only overzealous applicants will prevail.

Another viable area of control concerns the fees. Increasing the filing fees for various immigration and visa applications will cause financial difficulties for more applicants, resulting in fewer case filings.

As a preemptive measure, the pre-USCIS labor certification process can also be constricted by inundating the USDOL with “anti-foreign worker” personnel while making the adjudication criteria more stringent.

Appointing more immigration judges with nativist’s views will also go a long way towards making sure that most asylum applicants and removal relief seekers will be deported as intended.

As far as USCIS administrative support is concerned, people with anti-immigrant leanings can be deployed to provide lame customer service assistance, while customer service hours can be reduced to a minimum. Online and telephone follow-ups can routinely be shelved to trivialize delays.

Finally, considering that border control is one of the most strategic platforms for fortifying immigration restrictionism, making the entry process unreasonably cumbersome would discourage many people from traveling to and staying in the US.

One could only hope that the US legal immigration system will survive the oncoming political bloodbath unscathed.