At the beginning of 2021, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden will inherit an immigration system that has been dramatically transformed by the Trump administration over the past four years. These transformations include a new series of restrictive asylum policies, the construction of a border wall to Mexico, sweeping green-card limitations, broader deportation priorities, a decimated refugee program, and pandemic-era border restrictions. The Biden-Harris team will have much to contend with in forging pragmatic policies that both protect the US border and honor legal migration to the United States.
This discussion will feature T. Alexander Aleinikoff, University Professor and Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility at The New School; Roberto Suro, Professor of Journalism and Public Policy at the University of Southern California; and moderated by Daniel Benjamin, President of the American Academy in Berlin, who will discuss what post-Trump immigration policy might look like, and what challenges—political, bureaucratic, and cultural—the Biden administration is likely to face in the coming years.