WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is taking a significant election year step to provide aid to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status in the United States, in an effort to balance its own interests. aggressive crackdown on the southern border Earlier this month, it angered advocates and many Democratic Democrats.
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 possibly citizenship. The move could affect more than half a million immigrants, according to senior administration officials.
To be eligible, an immigrant must have lived in the United States for 10 years as of Monday and be married to a U.S. citizen. If an eligible immigrant’s application is approved, they will have three years to apply for a green card and receive a temporary work permit and will be protected from deportation in the meantime.
About 50,000 noncitizen children with a parent married to a U.S. citizen could also potentially benefit from the same process, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the proposal on condition of anonymity. There are no requirements for how long the couple must be married, and no one becomes eligible after Monday. That means immigrants who reach that 10-year milestone after Monday will not be eligible for the program, officials say.
Senior administration officials said they anticipate the process will be open to applications by the end of the summer, and the fee to be charged has not yet been determined.
Biden will discuss his plans on Tuesday 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 provided protections from deportation 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 return to Washington to attend the announcement.
The Democratic president will also announce new regulations that will make it easier for some DACA recipients and other young immigrants to qualify for long-term work visas. This would allow eligible immigrants to benefit from 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 in support of spouses is not new. The policy would expand the authority used by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to authorize “parole in place” for military family members, Andrea Flores, a former policy adviser to the Obama and Biden administrations, said today now vice-president. on FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization.
The in-place parole process allows eligible immigrants to begin a path to permanent residency in the United States without leaving the country, removing a common barrier for those who do not have legal status but are married to Americans. Flores said this “fulfills President Biden’s Day One promise to protect undocumented immigrants and their American families.”
People who illegally marry U.S. citizens must leave the country for years to gain legal status. Claudia Zúniga, of Houston, married a man who had lived in the United States since 2007 but left for Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, after their marriage in 2017 to wait until he could return legally.
Zúniga, 35, said her family’s life “took a 180-degree turn” when her husband moved to Mexico. Finding 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 vast crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border, effectively halting asylum claims for those arriving between officially designated ports of entry. Immigrant rights groups continued the Biden administration about that directive, which a senior administration official said led to fewer border encounters between ports on Monday.
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Associated Press writers Stephen Groves in Washington and Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report.