Biden to Issue Executive Orders on Child Separation, Migrants, Public Charge, and Naturalization
Some substance, some strategy
By Andrew R. Arthur on February 2, 2021
[This is been updated to include links to the text of the executive orders.]
President Biden is scheduled to issue three executive orders (EOs) today: one on family separation; one responding to irregular flows of migrants at the border; and one on "promoting integration of New Americans". The actual EOs have not been issued at this writing, and the devil is always in the details, but the three EOs appear to be a mix of substance and strategy, and in many ways, respond to problems that likely don't exist, or that do exist but with the wrong solution.
The first EO will create a "task force" on reuniting families that have been separated since the short-lived "zero tolerance" policy of the Trump administration. Here is the key line from that fact sheet on that one (for reasons I will explain below): "This task force will work across the U.S. government, with key stakeholders and representatives of impacted families, and with partners across the hemisphere to find parents and children separated by the Trump Administration." (Emphasis added.)
Those separations were a point that was raised at the last presidential debate, on October 22. At issue were 545 children present in the United States who had been separated from, but not yet reunited with, the parents and guardians who had brought them to this country.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Biden-Issue-Executive-Orders-Child-Separation-Migrants-Public-Charge-and-Naturalization
