WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is taking an expansive election-year step to provide relief to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status in the U.S. — with the goal of balancing their own aggressive border repression earlier this month, which infuriated 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 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 as of Monday and be married to a U.S. citizen. If a skilled immigrant’s application is approved, he or she will have three years to apply for a green card and receive a temporary work permit, and in the meantime will be protected from deportation.
About 50,000 noncitizen children whose parents are married to a U.S. citizen could also potentially qualify for the same process, according to senior administration officials who briefed journalists on the proposal on condition of anonymity. There is no requirement for how long the couple must be married and no one becomes eligible after Monday. This means that immigrants who reach the 10-year mark after June 17, 2024 will not qualify for the program, officials said.
Senior administration officials said they anticipate the process will be open for applications by the end of the summer, and the fees to be applied have not yet been determined.
Biden will talk about his plans at a Tuesday afternoon event at the White Housewhich 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 to young immigrants without legal status.
White House officials privately encouraged Democrats in the House, which is on recess this week, to travel back to Washington to watch 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. This would allow skilled immigrants to have more robust protections than the work permits offered by DACA, which currently faces legal challenges and no longer accepts 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 “parole” for military family members, said Andrea Flores, a former policy adviser in the Obama and Biden administrations who is now vice president. at FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization.
The parole process allows qualified immigrants to pursue the path to U.S. permanent residency without leaving the country, eliminating a common barrier for those without legal status but married to Americans. Flores said it “delivers on President Biden’s Day One promise to protect undocumented immigrants and their American families.”
Tuesday’s announcement comes two weeks later Biden revealed a sweeping crackdown on the US-Mexico border, which effectively suspended asylum claims for those arriving between officially designated ports of entry. Immigrant rights groups sued the Biden administration about that directive, which a senior administration official said Monday has led to fewer border encounters between ports.
___
Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
