Immigration
There are few domains where President Trump — with the help of Stephen Miller, a top adviser with a documented affinity for white nationalism — has made a more profound impact than immigration policy and administration. “Through administrative orders, strict enforcement and mere threat,” the Times editorial board wrote in October, “the White House has attacked virtually every aspect of immigration, legal and illegal.”
Mr. Trump’s influence on the immigration system has been so far-reaching that many experts say reversing his legacy will be difficult. “There’s so much change that has happened in the last four years, there’s no way a new administration could reverse things in four or even eight years,” Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told The Times.
Still, there are many counteractive measures Mr. Biden could — and has promised to — make:
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Reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which President Trump moved to terminate in 2017.
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Increase the number of annual refugee admissions into the United States, which the Trump administration slashed to a record low of 15,000 from 110,000 under the Obama administration, to 125,000.
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Create a task force to reunite the remaining 545 children who were separated at the border by the Trump administration with their families.
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Rescind the Trump administration’s ban on travel from 13 countries, most either majority-Muslim or African.
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End policies that aim to deter migrants from exercising their right under international law to claim asylum by inflicting maximum hardship at the border.
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Deport only undocumented immigrants who are convicted of felonies.
In the long term, Mr. Biden’s immigration agenda may also diverge from that of his former boss: The Obama administration deported millions of immigrants, which Mr. Biden called a “big mistake.”
Policing
Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have expressed their intent to work with Congress to pass a suite of policing reforms. Some of these, however, could be accomplished in full or in part through executive action, according to The American Prospect:
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Create a clear federal standard on use of police force.
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Reinstitute an Obama-era executive order that restricted the transfer of military equipment to police departments.
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Increase oversight by creating a national police review commission.
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Direct the Justice Department to issue consent decrees for local police departments, which were rolled back under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, to crack down on misconduct.
Strengthening labor
Mr. Biden cannot impose a minimum wage for all workers nationwide. But he can raise the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 an hour or more from its current $10.80; fortify the employment protections of government workers, which were weakened under the Trump administration; and use federal incentives and the National Labor Relations Board to protect workers’ rights to organize.
The Obama administration did take steps to facilitate workplace bargaining, but some labor leaders argue it was slow on the uptake. “It took too long in that previous administration to figure it out,” Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, told HuffPost. “And now that they figured it out, it’s much easier to imagine getting it done.”
Challenging capital
While Mr. Biden will not be able to enact the entirety of his tax plan without Congress, his administration could still act on its own to raise taxes in a few areas by changing or reinterpreting the regulations tied to Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax law. He could also instruct the Department of Justice to direct its power against employers who violate labor laws, monopolistic corporations and serious white-collar criminals instead of small-fry offenders.