President-elect Joe Biden's administration is expected to move quickly on climate and migration issues, including the “existential threat” of climate change as one of the four main policy areas in his transition plan.

The stakes could not have been higher going into election day. On migration, four years of the Trump administration were enough to cause serious damage to the immigration and asylum systems, as we highlighted in a SPOTLIGHT special feature back in July. Another four years would have been catastrophic. The country faced similarly dramatic crossroads on climate policy; scientists have been warning for some time now that the world is dangerously close to a point of no return in its fight to prevent catastrophic and irreversible impacts. 

While Biden’s promise to re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement and throw out the Trump administration’s Muslim ban on day one have made headlines around the world, there is so much more to keep an eye on with Inauguration Day just around the corner. 

Civil society groups, who have spent the last four years tracking - and generally criticizing - the Trump administration’s actions, have been vocal about the direction they hope the incoming administration will take.

Broadly speaking, the Biden administration has a chance to re-establish American leadership on the global stage, starting with repairing relations with the various organizations the US either officially exited or stopped funding during the last four years. For example, rejoining the UN Human Rights Council would allow greater coordination with other countries and civil society groups on climate and migration issues, among others. It would signal that the US cares about the human rights dimensions of its decisions, at home and abroad. Biden can also make the US a leader in protecting those seeking refuge, reverse discriminatory visa policies, recalibrate US funding commitments to the Green Climate Fund, and, perhaps most urgently, rejoin the World Health Organization and realign US policy on COVID. 

While the devil is always in the details, there is reason to believe that the incoming administration will mark a significant and positive shift away from the turmoil of the last four years, especially in the areas of climate and migration, both on immigration and asylum. 

Climate

While Biden’s promise to re-enter the Paris climate accord is notable, the administration is poised to pursue a much stronger climate agenda, stemming from recognition that climate change exacerbates existing crises and will require a much stronger US response. While it is true the Biden campaign has framed much of its climate policy in terms of investing in clean energy and making the US carbon neutral by 2050, it has also acknowledged the importance of environmental justice. For example, Biden’s plan calls for significant investment in communities disproportionately affected by climate change, which we already know tends to be communities of color and low-income communities. We do not yet know what such investment will entail, but it is certainly a step in the right direction, which could also see the US make progress on the broader issue of environmental racism and justice.

In a welcome change from the Trump administration’s neglect of entire government departments, there are signs that a Biden administration would harness the power of the federal government to combat climate change. Prior to the election, it was reported that then-candidate Biden was looking into creating a special White House office to coordinate climate policy across the various relevant departments and agencies. Potential candidates to lead such an office apparently include heavy-hitters like former Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped broker the Paris climate agreement and has shown years of deep concern over climate migrants and refugees, and Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff John Podesta, who has researched and written about climate policy for Brookings, specifically the climate crisis, migration and refugees. 

This whole-of-government approach would be an encouraging development in the fight against such a complex problem because it would send a clear signal that comprehensive climate action is a top priority of the incoming administration. The plan is not without its critics, including concerns it could alienate centrist Biden supporters who may not want an enlarged federal government. Despite this potential obstacle, we can generally expect that the Biden administration will try to use everything in its toolbox to get as much done as it can on climate, even without Congressional cooperation. 

Immigration

As NPR has reported, immigration policy shifts comprise several of Biden’s major legislative priorities. For one, the President-elect is calling for pathways to citizenship for some 11 million irregular migrants currently living in the US, a diverse group of people Donald Trump regularly demonized and used as a tool to whip up his base. Biden is also proposing a citizenship pathway for DREAMers as well as permanently institutionalizing the DACA program, something the Trump administration repeatedly tried to dismantle.

While some of Biden’s proposed immigration policies would require legislative action, the likelihood of which seems to hinge on runoff Senate elections in Georgia in January, there are several other substantive things the incoming President can accomplish. Biden’s plan to immediately rescind the current administration’s discriminatory travel ban imposed on Muslim-majority countries will likely be implemented on day one. But Biden says he will go even further, including a plan to prevent future such restrictions through legislation. This is notable in that it demonstrates a recognition that an extremist president should have much less ability to harm. 

The restrictions imposed these past four years on ‘legal’ immigration, including those on family reunification and employer-sponsored visas, can largely be dismantled through executive action alone, with positive effects on both the immigrants themselves and the US economy at large. One particular visa category that Biden is expected to address is the H-1B visa, the primary means by which highly-skilled immigrants come to the US. With the US facing potential brain drain and continued harm on international students, Biden will likely ensure that skyrocketing denial rates for H-1B visas under Trump - from 6% to nearly 30% - are rectified. 

Unfortunately, while Biden can shift considerable resources from enforcement to adjudication and processing at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the State Department, the task of addressing backlogs, both from Trump policies and from COVID-related slowdowns, is a daunting one Climate Refugees wrote about based on prior experience working in the US resettlement program. At the very least, there will undoubtedly be a major shift in tone starting January 20th, the impact of which should not be discounted.

After four years of demonizing immigrants and attempting to get the US as close to net-zero immigration as possible, according to Forbes reporter Stuart Anderson, the new Biden administration should follow a simple guiding rule:

“What would Stephen Miller and Donald Trump do? And do the opposite.” 

Asylum

While refugee and asylum policy is arguably a part of US immigration policy, Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on asylum in particular make it an area in which the Biden’s administration stands to make significant changes. 

One particularly extreme policy is Trump’s practice of separating migrant families at the southern border, an obviously cruel policy that was also poorly managed. In addition to immediately stopping separation of migrant families, Biden has promised a task force to reunite those already separated. This is an absolute must given that the parents of nearly 550 migrant children have still not been found as of late October.  

Echoing the calls of civil society, Biden’s plan in this regard will likely move quickly to end the Trump-era agreements with El Salvador and Honduras of strong arming these countries to accept returned non-citizen Central American asylum-seekers to seek asylum in their countries instead. He’s also likely to end the “safe third country” agreement with Guatemala, which forces non-Guatemala Central American asylum-seekers passing through en route to the US, to first seek asylum in Guatemala, even though Guatemala does not meet “safe third country” standards for asylum. 

Another policy the Biden administration has signaled it will end is “Remain in Mexico”, which forces Central American asylum-seekers to return to Mexico for an indefinite period of time to await their asylum claims processing. 

These agreements are clearly legal violations of US and international law, specifically the 1980 US Refugee Act and the 1951 Refugee Convention, both of which prohibit the forcible return of refugees, and by extension, asylum-seekers, to countries where their lives are threatened and are at risk of persecution. 

It is therefore no surprise that Biden’s victory was celebrated by asylum-seekers waiting in camps along the border, a fate that has affected more than 66,000 migrants. In related news, Biden’s reforms will likely also include an end to the Trump administration’s ‘metering’ of asylum cases, whereby entry of potential asylum-seekers was purposefully reduced, prompting some to risk their safety by crossing illegally.

With everything that has happened in the last four years, the Biden administration is also expected to reign in agencies that have been at the center of Trump’s attack on asylum. Stronger oversight of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is crucial to prevent the kind of shocking treatment we have seen under the Trump administration. These include the persistent unsafe conditions, denial of PPE, deportations of COVID-positive asylum-seekers during a pandemic and more, which we detailed here and here, and the recent shocking reported hysterectomies performed on detained migrant women, seemingly unaware or without their full consent, which in addition to being a human rights violation, could also constitute a crime against humanity under international law. 

In addition to the many issues facing asylum-seekers within the US and along our borders, it is important to note that the incoming administration plans to significantly increase refugee resettlement, which reached historic lows under Trump. Rebuilding the resettlement program will require significant re-investment in agencies neglected by Trump-era budgets, especially with a backlog of over 120,000 cases, and many other obstructions we highlighted in a recent SPOTLIGHT.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list of policy shifts expected under President-elect Biden, and there will be a mind-numbing amount of work to do come January on climate and migration, not to mention the pressing issues of the COVID pandemic and the resultant economic crisis. With some arguing that Biden’s central challenge will be to unite a fractured America, we feel that there is reason to be hopeful when it comes to climate and migration under this new administration, starting with its very basic, yet very powerful shift in tone: “ensure that the US meets its responsibilities as both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants.”  (Reuters, NPR, Bloomberg, Forbes, LA Times, CBS News, The Guardian)