United President Joe Biden is set to announce a new policy that would protect hundreds of thousands of undocumented spouses of US citizens from deportation, according to administration officials.
The issue of immigration has proven an election-year headache for Biden, who recently issued a sweeping executive action to curb record migrant arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The new policy will apply to those who have been in the country for at least 10 years and will allow them to work in the U.S. legally.
The White House believes more than 500,000 spouses will benefit.
Biden has vowed to make the U.S. immigration system “more fair and more just”. Polls show that the issue is a primary concern for many voters ahead of the presidential poll in November.
The White House also believes the new spouses’ policy will benefit 50,000 young people under 21 whose parent is married to an American citizen.
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It marks the most significant relief programme for undocumented migrants already in the U.S. since the Obama administration announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or Daca, in 2012.
The announcement comes ahead of an event yesterday marking the 12th anniversary of Daca, which shielded over 530,000 migrants who came to the U.S. as children – known as Dreamers – from deportation.
On Monday, senior administration officials said that undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens would qualify if they had lived in the country for 10 years and been married as of 17 June.
Those who qualify will have three years to apply for permanent residency and will be eligible for a three-year work permit.
On average, the White House believes that those eligible for the process have been in the U.S. for 23 years. A majority will have been born in Mexico.
They will be “paroled in place” and allowed to remain in the U.S. while their status is changed.
NumbersUSA, an organisation that advocates for tighter immigration controls, slammed the new policy as “unconscionable”.
The organisation’s chief executive, James Massa, said in a statement: “Rather than stopping the worst border crisis in history, President Biden has overreached his executive authority to use an unconstitutional process, circumventing voters and their elected representatives in Congress, to send a message that amnesty is available to those who enter illegally into the United States.”
Alex Cuic, an immigration lawyer and professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, told the BBC that while the action affected a “narrow group”, it marked a “start” for a segment of the US immigrant population that historically would face complications normalising their status in the country, even when eligible.
“A good majority of them [would have] to leave the country in order to come back lawfully,” he said. “It’s like they physically enter the US, but their immigration ‘soul’ doesn’t come with them.”
