Biden Administration Considers “Rules” to Transform Temporary Work Visa Into Green Cards

The way our constitutional form of government is supposed to work: The Legislative Branch, Congress, writes and passes legislation. The president signs bills into law. The Executive Branch, i.e. the relevant cabinet departments, promulgate rules that faithfully implement the laws as intended by Congress. 

The way our constitutional form of government actually works nowadays: A new president comes to office and decides he does not like laws enacted in the past, and cannot convince Congress to rewrite them, so he assigns the relevant cabinet departments to write rules that blatantly ignore or flout the intent of our laws.

The latter model is exactly how the Biden administration has been subverting our immigration laws. The latest example is a plan to use the rulemaking process to turn temporary H-2A and H-2B workers into green card holders. H-2A workers are admitted for seasonal agricultural work, while H-2B visas cover other low-skill seasonal workers, such as landscapers, tourist industry workers and the like.

The laws establishing these two visa categories explicitly bar the admission of “dual intent” workers, i.e. foreign nationals seeking to use a temporary work visa to gain a permanent foothold in the United States. Now, under the rubric of “modern[izing] and reform[ing]” the H-2A and H-2B visa programs, the Biden administration seeks to ignore the clear intent of the law. Temporary worker visa programs were created in a way that is supposed to protect the jobs and wages of American workers and discourage employers from bypassing them in favor of lower wage guestworkers, or using these programs to tamp down wages. 

“The [rulemaking process] also proposes to provide increased flexibility for H-2 workers by extending grace periods, and allowing H-2 workers to take steps toward becoming permanent residents of the United States without being deemed to have abandoned their nonimmigrant intent or their foreign residence solely on that basis,” states a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) summary of the rulemaking proposal. In response to an inquiry by Fox News, USCIS characterizes the rulemaking effort as part of the agency’s commitment “to promoting policies and procedures that break down barriers in the immigration system, increase access to eligible immigration benefits [that] uphold America’s promise as a nation of welcome and possibility with fairness, integrity, and respect for all we serve.” Never mind that the very intent of our immigration laws are intended to serve as barriers. 

The proposed changes through the regulatory process is just the latest Biden administration efforts to create extra-legal immigration processes. In recent months, the administration has created what amounts to a parallel immigration system for 360,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans each year, through the blatant abuse of the president’s parole authority. 

Centuries of immigration law have been designed to limit the number of people who can settle in the United States based on the understanding that the nation has an obligation to protect the interests of the American people. Every action taken by the Biden administration in its first two years in office is designed to eliminate limits on immigration, regardless of the damage inflicted on the American people.