President-elect Joe Biden is expected to make
some reversals in the immigration policies which were implemented by the previous administration
and criticized for being heavy handed.

Biden will have his work cut out in this regard considering
the many such acts Trump brought which are not seen to be immigrant-friendly.  

Among the reversals he will be expected to effect will be
the implementation of the reinstated ‘Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
Program’ or DACA, which was brought in by the second Obama administration, but
got entangled in multiple litigations immediately after when several states
objected to it. The litigations were carried over in Trump administration.

The Act stipulates for a deferred action against the illegal
immigrants who were brought in the country as minors, providing them two years’
renewable time before deportation allowing them work permit.

In June 2020, US Supreme Court adjudicated against
revocation of the act.

The President-elect is likely to stop funding the US-Mexico border wall, seen by many as Trump’s vanity project erected to ward of illegal migrants. A roughly 400 miles (644 km) long wall is already built. Biden may  not bring it down, but is very likely to not nourish it further with taxpayers’ money. 

Biden is also expected to join separated children from their
illegal migrant parents, who were infamously kept in “cages” at the US-Mexico border
by the Trump administration.

Biden earlier said he wants the government to help find
parents of these hundreds of children separated from their parents at
the border early in the Trump administration, whose asylum policy he termed as “detrimental”.

As per the immigration policy reform that Biden unveiled in
his transition website, he aims to: “Immediately reverse the Trump
Administration’s cruel and senseless policies that separate parents from their
children at our border…”

The issue of cage became a talking point
during the final Biden-Trump debate when Trump repeatedly asked Biden “who
built the cages”.

It is true that the cages, the pictures of which so infamously splashed
across newspapers with illegal immigrants kept in them, were built during the
Obama administration in which Biden was the Vice President.

Though it carries an otherwise elaborate indictment of Trump’s immigrant policies and their flaws throughtout their tenure, Biden’s transition website does not mention cages even once. 

Most of the immigrant policies are now in
court and reversing them will require some deft maneuvering on part of the administration-in-waiting.

“Biden will move cautiously on asylum to avoid setting off a
new wave of arrivals and… other changes will face ‘procedural and practical
problems’,” an AP report said quoting an expert in the immigrant issues.

 “It is going to take four years to undo all the damage
that the Trump administration has done,” it said quoting Stephen Yale-Loehr, a
professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School, and a strong
critic of Trump immigrant policies.

Biden has also listed as one of his priorities
rescinding the travel ban from several Muslim countries, implemented by Trump, which
put a limit on refugee intake indefinitely and imposed strict rules for travel
from these countries—mostly Arab.