Biden lifts most of its visa sanctions on Laos, significant for Southeast Asian Americans

788
4
Biden lifts most of its visa sanctions on Laos, significant for Southeast Asian Americans

The Biden administration lifted most of its visa sanctions on Laos, a move that is significant for thousands of Southeast Asian Americans, many of whom are refugees and their families in the immigration process, according to experts.

The issuance of visas to people in Laos was stopped due to a Trump-era immigration ban. Some 2,000 people could be reunited with loved ones after the sanctions, which were originally seen as a retaliatory measure used to pressure Laos into accepting more deportees.

Over the last few years, they have not been able to sponsor their spouses or kids because of the arbitrary sanctions that are very ethnically based, Kham Moua, director of national policy at the nonprofit Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, told NBC Asian America. The administration taking steps for lifting was a great first step to reverse some of the damage done by the Trump administration. The Biden administration wrote in a memo that the majority of Lao citizens who have applied for travel or immigrant visas will no longer be subject to the ban, a move authorized by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The document noted that sanctions will still be in place for certain government officials, depending on whether Laos cooperates with the U.S. demands to accept deportees.

The move came after more than 30 advocacy groups and several members of Congress signed a letter, spearheaded by Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., that demanded the Department of Homeland Security lift the Trump-era sanctions, which included those on Laos. The letter called the sanction a backdoor immigration ban. The letter addressed to the Biden administration in September said that visa sanctions continue to harm refugees and asylum seekers in the United States by tearing families apart and forcing governments to repatriate those individuals.

Moua said that Laos has remained on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's list of recalcitrant countries for years, a distinction given to governments that refuse to issue the travel documents required to carry out deportations. Under the Trump administration, the country was slapped with diplomatic sanctions as pressured to aid in the removal of more Laotian immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security asked Laos to accept a quota of deportees, which the country didn't meet. Moua said the U.S. responded by escalating its punitive measures and expanding the visa ban.

It just shows how certain niche and technical laws can be used by nefarious administrations to target communities of color and immigrant communities, Moua said.

The Laotian American community is made up of a large refugee population that has been forced to flee their home countries in Southeast Asia due to U.S. occupation in the 1970s. With loved ones separated due to war, family-based immigration has been a way in which these households can be reunited. Families can end up on a visa backlog for more than a decade in the worst cases even if they get the documents, even if they don't have a ban.

Moua said organizers will continue to press the Biden administration to lift visa sanctions on Myanmar, Burundi, Cambodia and Eritrea.

The sanctions need to be repealed because they are being used as a tool to pressure countries into removing more folks that those countries don't want back, or those who would be hurt if they were removed from those countries, Moua said.

In the Southeast Asian community, for example, sanctions on Cambodia resulted in an increase in the deportation of Cambodian nationals by 279 percent between 2017 and 2018 according to ICE data. Many of those who were removed came to the US legally as refugees but had been convicted of crimes.

Kevin Lo, an immigration attorney at the legal rights organization Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus, previously stated that Cambodian Americans who are facing deportation have often avoided any contact with the criminal justice system and have established families and careers.

For almost all of the cases we have encountered, the crime was committed decades ago, Lo said. Most of these people have shown that they have changed their lives, started families and are essential members of their communities since that time. Many of those who were relocated to Cambodia have difficulty finding housing, jobs and medical access because of high levels of suicide and mental health issues because of their lack of family ties and language skills.

There is no reason why visa sanctions should be on the books because of the Department of Homeland Security's other means and tools of communicating and working bilaterally with these countries, Moua said. What we need to do is an overhaul with this tool, so that future administrations can't use it in the same way that they did with Laos.