DHS Quietly Withdraws Two Key Immigration Integrity Regulations
By Robert Law on May 11, 2021
In a series of posts earlier this year, I highlighted several key immigration regulations that the Trump administration was unable to finalize by publication in the Federal Register before Joe Biden’s inauguration. (See here, here, here, and here.) In each piece, I detailed why the Biden administration should finalize these regulations because they reflect sound immigration policy that should cross the political spectrum.
Unfortunately, politics rules the day and the Biden administration quietly and officially withdrew two of the key regulations I highlighted. As a result, a subsequent administration will have to go through the notice and comment period required under the Administrative Procedure Act again before the regulations can be finalized.
The first proposed regulation withdrawn is entitled, “Modernizing Biometrics Collection for Immigration Vetting”, a long-overdue regulation that would have replaced the current outdated and incomplete screening and vetting techniques that expose the country to fraud, exploitation, public safety, and national security concerns. As I previously explained, this rule would modernize biometrics collections by establishing a uniform definition of "biometrics" for all of DHS, replacing the patchwork of specified identifying modalities (e.g., fingerprint, photograph) used for various DHS purposes. By contrast, the current practice of using "name and date of birth" identifiers or submitting documents to establish identity are unreliable and can be easily misrepresented or counterfeited.
https://cis.org/Law/DHS-Quietly-Withdraws-Two-Key-Immigration-Integrity-Regulations
