In a significant election-year move, President Joe Biden has announced a plan to provide potential citizenship to hundreds of thousands of immigrants currently without legal status in the United States. This initiative is designed to balance the administration’s recent stringent measures on the southern border, which sparked criticism from advocates and Democratic lawmakers.
The White House revealed that, over the coming months, the Biden administration will allow certain undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship. This new policy could impact up to half a million immigrants, according to senior administration officials.
To qualify, immigrants must have resided in the United States for at least ten years as of June 17, 2024, and be married to a U.S. citizen. Once approved, applicants will have three years to apply for a green card, during which they will receive a temporary work permit and protection from deportation. Additionally, about 50,000 noncitizen children with a parent married to a U.S. citizen may also qualify for this process.
“This policy fulfills President Biden’s Day 1 promise to protect undocumented immigrants and their American families,” said Andrea Flores, a former policy adviser in the Obama and Biden administrations and current vice president.
The process is expected to open for applications by the end of the summer, with application fees yet to be determined. President Biden will discuss the plan further at a White House event marking the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, an Obama-era initiative providing deportation protections and work permits for young immigrants without legal status.
In addition to this new policy, Biden will announce regulations facilitating easier access to work visas for certain DACA beneficiaries and other young immigrants, providing more robust protections than those offered by the current DACA program, which is under legal challenge and no longer accepting new applications.
This announcement comes just two weeks after Biden’s administration implemented a crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border, effectively halting asylum claims for individuals arriving between official ports of entry. This measure led to a reduction in border encounters but faced legal challenges from immigrant rights groups.
The policy is an expansion of the authority previously used by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to grant “parole in place” for family members of military personnel, enabling qualifying immigrants to pursue permanent residency without leaving the country.