President Joe Biden is unveiling new actions Tuesday that will speed a pathway to legal residency for about 500,000 undocumented people living in the United States.
Biden’s announcement, made days after the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, comes just weeks after the president signed an executive order that will forcibly close the southern border and allow the federal government to expand deportation procedures for incoming immigrants when crossings reach a certain threshold, a policy that drew sharp condemnation from immigration activists and members of his own party.
Biden’s sweeping immigration eases the pathway to legal status for roughly half a million undocumented spouses married to U.S. citizens who have lived in the country for more than a decade as of June 17, 2024.
Approved cases will be granted a three-year window to apply for legal permanent residency for themselves, in addition to their estimated 50,000 children under the age of 21, and remain working in the United States until that process concludes. The president is also expediting the visa process for any foreign-born students, including “Dreamers,” who graduate from U.S. higher education institutions and hold an offer of employment from an American company.
Immigration activists and Democratic insiders had voiced concerns about the president’s visible shift to the right on immigration in recent months, with some claiming that Biden was abandoning his campaign promises to roll back former President Donald Trump‘s more restrictive immigration policies and provide a pathway to U.S. citizenship for DACA program recipients.
The White House engaged in substantive negotiations on the Senate’s bipartisan border reform bill that failed earlier this year. However, when announcing his border-focused executive order on June 4, the president vowed to be back with a new announcement in the coming weeks about plans to “make our immigration system more fair and more just.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, indicated that Tuesday’s actions are a step in the right direction. The American Immigration Council had previously argued that Biden’s previous immigration executive action “will not bring greater order or security to the U.S.-Mexico border.”
“The Biden administration’s efforts will help a population of people already eligible for green cards overcome the obstacle which has prevented them from getting permanent status. There is no reason that Americans who fall in love with undocumented immigrants should be forced to endure the possibility of a decade of separation to live with them here in this country,” Reichlin-Melnick told the Washington Examiner.
“By granting parole to spouses of undocumented immigrants, the Biden administration will ensure that people can get the permanent resident status they are eligible for already without having to risk a decade of separation,” Reichlin-Melnick continued. “However, by limiting the program only to those here since before June 2014, there are many people married to U.S. citizens today who will not benefit.”
FWD.us President Todd Schulte called the announcement “a tremendous step forward from President Biden and a much-needed fulfillment of the promise to keep families together.”
“We celebrate alongside millions whose futures are brighter today, stand with those still awaiting similar protections, and renew our commitment to protecting this progress and fixing every aspect of our failed immigration system — including giving a pathway to citizenship to those who have waited too long,” he stated.
Still, several groups focused on limiting migration to the U.S. framed Biden’s new policies as a “mass amnesty” giveaway in an election year.
“Biden’s ‘parole-in-place’ mass amnesty is yet another example of industrial scale abuse of narrow emergency authority without consent of Congress,” National Immigration Center for Enforcement president R.J. Hauman said in a statement. “Instead of working to close the deadly border he intentionally opened, Biden is putting illegal aliens above American citizens and the rule of law—a move that will encourage even more illegal immigration and leave struggling American taxpayers to pick up the tab.”
“President Biden sees the writing on the wall and knows his disastrous and unpopular border policies will put him out of a job in November. But instead of trying to fix the crisis he made that’s getting Americans killed, he’s doing everything he can to further destroy our immigration system before his executive authority is taken away by the voters,” Heritage Action Executive Vice President Ryan Walker added. “Biden’s potential mass amnesty order would be another attempt to circumvent the law and Congress to reward illegal aliens at the expense of American taxpayers. Voters should take note of his priorities when they go to the ballot box.”
Senior administration officials stressed to reporters Monday that neither of Biden’s actions extend a new pathway to legal status for any undocumented immigrants. In the case of undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, those individuals will now be allowed to apply for legal status without leaving the country, which had been a program requirement prior to Biden’s change.
Immigration has steadily emerged as a top issue for voters on both sides of the aisle ahead of the 2024 general election in November.
Polling conducted by Pew Research found that the share of people who think illegal immigrants should not be allowed to stay in the country has steadily increased since 2017.
Pew’s June survey saw 59% of the 8,709 participants believing that undocumented immigrants currently living in the country for an extended period of time should be afforded some type of legal status, down from 77% in 2017. The vast majority of the 41% who answered the opposite, up from 22% across the same time frame, said there should be a coordinated effort to deport all undocumented immigrants currently living in the country.
A poll published on June 12 by Monmouth University found that 40% of people favored Biden’s border order, with 27% opposed. A greater share of Republicans, 44%, backed the president’s action than both Democrats, 44%, and independents, 38%.
Multiple Democratic strategists with close ties to the Biden campaign and White House rejected the idea that the president’s Tuesday moves were a reaction to blowback his border order fomented among allies.
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“Just listen to President Biden’s words. He promised this action was coming,” one veteran Democratic operative told the Washington Examiner.
“Immigration is a hotly contested issue for an obvious reason: The system is broken,” a second strategist stated. “Both parties know it, but what President Biden refuses to do is pursue reforms, like his predecessor, that debase and endanger people fleeing danger in their home countries in hopes of a better life here. That’s the American dream, and President Biden is fighting every day to keep that dream alive.”
