Immigration-Related Regulatory Proposals Expected in 2024
By Elizabeth Jacobs on January 24, 2024
Elizabeth Jacobs is the director of regulatory affairs and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.
As we enter the fourth year of the Biden administration, CIS expects immigration policy-makers to continue their aggressive regulatory agenda. Discussed below are the regulatory changes that the Biden administration has indicated it intends to make in 2024 related to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Labor (DOL), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). These departments all have jurisdiction over issues that impact immigration policy in the United States.
1. Asylum Eligibility
Under the direction of a January 2021 executive order, policymakers in DHS and DOJ have been working on a joint regulation to define key terms pertinent to asylum eligibility. Specifically, the rule will define “membership in a particular social group” (PSG; one of the five protected grounds of persecution required for eligibility to receive protection under the asylum laws). The rule will also interpret various other elements of eligibility for asylum, including some that are often determinative in PSG claims, such as the requirements that an applicant establish that the government was “unwilling or unable” to protect the applicant against the alleged harm, and determinations about whether persecution is “on account of” a protected ground, or driven by a reason that is not covered by asylum, such as general violence. Currently, the interpretations of these terms are determined by case law and may vary depending on which federal circuit’s law is being applied.
While the deadline imposed by the executive order (270 days) has long passed, both DHS and DOJ have indicated in the Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions (a report issued by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a subdivision of the Office of Management and Budget) that publishing the rule continues to be a priority for the administration in 2024.
Why Does This Matter? This regulation has potential to further expand asylum-related loopholes and undermine border security efforts by encouraging additional illegal immigration to the United States by, for instance, expanding the definition of “membership in a particular social group” to encompass many more people.
https://cis.org/Report/ImmigrationRelated-Regulatory-Proposals-Expected-2024
