FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
February 25, 2021
Contact: Nikki Metzgar
(202) 599-7642 / nmetzgar@napawf.org

Washington, D.C. — On Wednesday, President Biden revoked President Trump’s ban on the provision of most new green cards, which had effectively shut down the immigration system for nearly a year. In FY2020, around 100,000 family-based visas were lost due to the ban and numerical caps on visas. 

Immigrant women are more likely than immigrant men to enter the country through family immigration channels. Of the 3.5 million individuals waiting in the family visa backlog in 2019, 40 percent, or 1.4 million, were from Asian countries. Wait times have become so long that sponsored children become adults or get married, meaning they get moved into a different visa category and that can delay family reunification even more. Under the order, sponsorship of adult children, siblings, and parents of U.S. citizens were halted, leaving Asian families stranded across continents. 

National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum Executive Director Sung Yeon Choimorrow issued the following statement in response:

“The end of this ban is a huge relief to immigrant women and families who were forced to watch the clock tick down on their ability to obtain visas. We hope that more families will be able to reunite and move forward with their lives together. 

Many Asian American and Pacific Islander immigrants have waited in line for years for a green card and even before the pandemic, immigration officers could deny entry to the United States without cause. Our immigration laws have long been broken. We deserve to have control over what happens to our loved ones. We will keep pushing for a system that protects our families and doesn’t deny us the resources we need to thrive because of where we’re from or the status we’ve been granted.”

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The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) is the only multi-issue, progressive, community organizing and policy advocacy organization for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women and girls in the U.S. NAPAWF’s mission is to build collective power so that all AAPI women and girls can have full agency over our lives, our families, and our communities.