Last night President Trump tweeted that he would issue an executive order to temporarily “suspend immigration into the United States.” We know such a statement from the President can understandably create a lot of anxiety and uncertainty, so we want to share our opinion of what this probably means and the likely impact in order to prevent any unnecessary confusion.
At this point, we have nothing more to go on than the President’s vague tweet. “Suspend immigration into the United States” does not mean anything legally, and trying to figure out what the President envisions when he says this is difficult at best. The concept of “immigration” has a very technical and legal aspect to it, but this administration has often used the term broadly and imprecisely. Furthermore, no official confirmation or clarification has been provided by the White House or Department of Homeland Security at this time. Our position is that until we see something more official, it’s best to treat this as a political statement, not a legal one. The President does not have the authority to “cancel” immigration because most of the law regarding immigration is established by Congress. Major changes to immigration require congressional approval (in other words, both the House and Senate must agree). The administration standing alone without Congress does not have the legal authority to “cancel” immigration, and any attempts to do so would likely be met with significant legal challenges.
It’s also important to put this statement into context. Given the current pandemic and its spread across the globe, the U.S. Department of State has already ceased many operations overseas. For example, the Department of State has suspended all routine visa services at all U.S. Embassies and Consulates, effectively making it impossible to get a new visa outside the U.S. except in emergency situations. The policy of the administration has been to limit travel from individuals overseas to the U.S. in order to prevent further spread of the virus. President Trump’s tweet may simply refer to further restrictions on travel into the U.S. from abroad.
In short and at this time, we simply don’t know what the order will say or what its impact will be. Indeed, everything right now is simply speculation because of the vagueness of the tweet and the lack of official confirmation. However, given the context of the current global situation, the administration’s past actions, and the limits on President Trump’s authority to change immigration laws, we believe that this new policy will likely be targeting activities that originate abroad and impact travel from one country to another. This means that we believe that I-140 and I-485 cases are unlikely to be directly impacted at this time.
We of course will be following these developments very closely and we will update as soon as we possibly can with any new information.