President Joe Biden He will take an expansive measure in an election year to offer relief to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status in the United States, aiming to balance the border restriction he implemented earlier this month.
The White House announced Tuesday that the Biden administration will allow, in the coming months, certain spouses of U.S. citizens without legal status apply for permanent residence and, eventually, citizenship. The measure could affect more than half a million immigrants, according to senior administration officials.
To qualify, an immigrant must have lived in the United States for 10 years counting backward from this Monday and be married to a U.S. citizen. If a qualified immigrant’s application is approved, he or she would have three years to apply for a green card and, in the meantime, receive a temporary work permit and be protected from deportation.
About 50,000 noncitizen children whose parents are married to a U.S. citizen could also qualify for the same process., according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the proposal on condition of anonymity. There is no requirement for how long the couple must have been married and no one is eligible after Monday. That means immigrants who reach that 10-year mark any time after June 17, 2024 will not qualify for the program, according to officials.
Senior administration officials said they anticipate that The process will be open for applications in late summer, and application fees have not yet been determined.
Biden will discuss his plans at an event Tuesday afternoon at the White House, which will also mark the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a popular Obama-era directive that offered protections against deportation and temporary work permits for young immigrants who lack legal status.
White House officials privately encouraged Democrats in the House, which is on recess this week, to travel back to Washington to attend the announcement.
The president will also announce new regulations that will allow certain DACA recipients and other young immigrants to more easily qualify for long-established work visas. That would allow qualified immigrants to have stronger protections than the work permits offered by DACA, which currently faces legal challenges and is no longer accepting new applications.
The power Biden invokes with his Tuesday announcement for spouses is not new. The policy would expand the authority used by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to allow “effective parole” for military family members, said Andrea Flores, a former policy adviser to the Obama and Biden administrations and now vice president at FWD.us. , an immigration advocacy organization.
The parole process allows qualified immigrants to pursue a path to permanent residency in the United States without leaving the country, removing a common barrier for those without legal status but married to Americans. Flores said it “fulfills President Biden’s first day promise to protect undocumented immigrants and their American families.”
Tuesday’s announcement comes two weeks after Biden unveiled a sweeping crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border that effectively halted asylum claims for those arriving between officially designated ports of entry. Immigrant rights groups have sued the Biden administration over that directive, which a senior administration official said Monday had led to fewer border encounters between ports.
(with information from AP)
