President Biden's Day One: Reversing Trump's immigration policies, promoting race equity, fighting white supremacists

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President Joe Biden made overcoming racial inequity a key role of his administration.

On Day One, Joe Biden wasted no time to getting down to the business of being the President of the United States.

In his inaugural speech, two weeks after racists roamed the halls of the Capitol, Biden called out white supremacists for what they are: domestic terrorists.

“A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear. And now, a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront, and we will defeat,” Biden said. 

"Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, and demonization have long torn us apart," said Biden later in his speech.

“To overcome these challenges – to restore the soul and to secure the future of America – requires more than words,” he acknowledged.

After his coronavirus-affected inauguration, he walked to the White House and signed a host of executive actions, memorandums, and requests to agencies covering the pandemic, economic relief, climate change and racial equity.

He will also move to freeze or suspend dozens of last-minute Trump administrative practices and regulations, most of which can be reversed or neutered with a swipe of a pen.

IMMIGRATION

Perhaps the most complicated and potentially contentious act Biden did was to send to Congress an immigration reform bill, the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which will provide an 8-year long path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants, a sharp contrast to his predecessor who offered harsh policies severely limiting immigration.

The Biden-Harris bill also aims to strengthen the family-based immigration system through which many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have immigrated to this country.

“President Biden’s immigration plan demonstrates that humane policy is smart policy,” stated Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of the nonprofit Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. “If passed, this legislation will modernize our immigration system, keep families together, expand economic opportunity, address the root causes of migration, and restore United States leadership as a refuge for those fleeing persecution.”

In addition to the U.S. Citizenship Act, Biden announced a series of immigration-related executive orders, including protecting participants in the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program, reversing the Muslim and African travel bans, stopping border wall construction, and revoking the executive order that directed harsh and extreme immigration enforcement that includes halting deportations for 100 days. 

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History was made with the swearing-in of Kamala Harris as Vice President. She became the
first woman, first Asian American, first Black woman to assume that role.

INSTITUTIONAL RACISM

In another action, Biden did away with the Trump-created 1776 Commission's recent report that distorted the impact of slavery on America's culture and society. The commission was created to counter the historical view that slavery and the beliefs that endorsed it were the driving forces that formed the basis of today's racism and racial inequity.

In a separate executive order, Biden ordered advancing racial equity throughout the federal government recognizing that institutional racism has seeped into the foundations of our institutions, including federal entities that he oversees.

This order creates an initiative to advance racial equity, directing federal agencies to review of the state of equity within their agencies and directs them to engage with communities who have been historically underrepresented, underserved, and discriminated against in federal policies. This executive order revokes Trump's order that did away with diversity and inclusion training for federal government agencies, contractors, and grantees.