U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday withdrew an announcement from his predecessor barring green card applicants from entering the United States.
Former President Donald Trump issued the ruling last year, saying it was necessary to protect American workers amid high unemployment due to the coronavirus epidemic.
Biden denied the allegations in a statement issued on Wednesday lifting the visa ban. The president of the Democratic Alliance has said it has banned families from reuniting in the United States and damaging American businesses.
Biden, a Democrat, has promised to change many of Trump’s immigration policies. Immigration lawyers had pressured him weeks ago to lift the visa ban, which was due to expire on March 31.
Biden has replaced another ban on many temporary foreign workers.
In October, a federal judge in California lifted Trump’s ban on foreign workers as it affected hundreds of thousands of American businesses who opposed the policy in court.
Curtis Morrison, California’s immigration lawyer, who represents the people under ban, said Biden would now have to deal with backlogs of applications that had been delayed for months as the epidemic blocked the processing of multiple visas by the State Department. The process could take years, he said.
“It’s a reversal of what Trump has done,” Morrison said. “You have violated the immigration system.”
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.