500,000 immigrants could eventually get US citizenship under Biden’s new plan
UNB
Publish: 19 Jun 2024, 05:24 PM
WASHINGTON
(AP) - President Joe Biden is taking an expansive election year step to offer
relief to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status
in the U.S., aiming to balance his own aggressive crackdown on the southern
border earlier this month that enraged advocates and many Democratic lawmakers.
The White House
announced Tuesday that the Biden administration will, in the coming months,
allow certain spouses of U.S. citizens without legal status to apply for
permanent residency and eventually citizenship. The move could affect upwards
of half a million immigrants, according to senior administration officials.
To qualify, an immigrant
must have lived in the United States for 10 years as of Monday and be married
to a U.S. citizen. If a qualifying immigrant's application is approved, he or
she would have three years to apply for a green card and receive a temporary
work permit and be shielded from deportation in the meantime.
About 50,000 noncitizen
children with a parent who is married to a U.S. citizen could also potentially
qualify for the same process, according to senior administration officials who
briefed reporters on the proposal on the condition of anonymity. There is no
requirement on how long the couple must have been married, and no one becomes
eligible after Monday. That means immigrants who reach that 10-year mark after
Monday will not qualify for the program, according to the officials.
Senior administration
officials said they anticipate the process will be open for applications by the
end of the summer, and fees to apply have yet to be determined.
Biden will speak about
his plans at a Tuesday event 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 deportation protections and temporary work
permits for young immigrants who lack legal status.
White House officials
privately encouraged Democrats in the House, which is in recess this week, to
travel back to Washington to attend the announcement.
The Democratic president
will also announce new regulations that will allow certain DACA beneficiaries
and other young immigrants to more easily qualify for long-established work
visas. That would allow qualifying immigrants to have protection that is sturdier
than the work permits offered by DACA, which is currently facing legal
challenges and is no longer taking new applications.
The power that Biden is
invoking with his Tuesday announcement for spouses is not a novel one. The
policy would expand on authority used by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack
Obama to allow "parole in place" for family members of military
members, said Andrea Flores, a former policy adviser in the Obama and Biden administrations
who is now a vice president at FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization.
The parole-in-place
process allows qualifying immigrants to get on the path to U.S. permanent
residency without leaving the country, removing a common barrier for those
without legal status but married to Americans. Flores said it "fulfills
President Biden's Day 1 promise to protect undocumented immigrants and their
American families."
People in the country
illegally who marry U.S. citizens have to leave for years to get legal status.
Claudia Zuniga, of Houston, married a man who was in the United States since
2007 but left for Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, after they wed in 2017 to bide time
until he could return legally.
Zuniga, 35, said her
family's life "did a 180-degree turn" when her husband moved to
Mexico. Reuniting with her husband "would be a dream come true."
"My husband could
be with us," she said. "We could focus on the well-being of our
children."
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.
End/UNB/AP/MB