AUGUST 27, 2024:
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — A federal judge in Texas has issued a temporary pause on the Biden administration’s new protections that would allow immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens a path to citizenship. The order Monday (Aug. 26, 2024) by U.S. District Judge J. Campbell Barker comes after 16 states, led by Republican attorneys general, challenged the program in a lawsuit filed last week. President Joe Biden launched the program in June and the application process has been open for a week. The policy offers spouses of U.S. citizens without legal status, who meet certain criteria, a path to citizenship by applying for a green card and staying in the U.S. while undergoing the process.
JUNE 19, 2024:
HOUSTON (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of immigrants had reason to rejoice when President Joe Biden unveiled a highly expansive plan to extend legal status to spouses of U.S. citizens but, inevitably, some were left out.
Claudia Zúniga, 35, married in 2017, or 10 years after her husband came to the United States. He moved to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, after they wed, knowing that, by law, he had to live outside the country for years to gain legal status. “Our lives took a 180-degree turn,” she said.
Biden announced Tuesday (June 18, 2024) that his administration will, in coming months, allow U.S. citizens’ spouses without legal status to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship without having to first depart the country for up to 10 years. About 500,000 immigrants may benefit, according to senior administration officials.
To qualify, an immigrant must have lived in the United States for 10 years and be married to a U.S. citizen, both as of Monday. Zúniga’s husband is ineligible because he wasn’t in the United States.
“Imagine, it would be a dream come true,” said Zúniga, who works part-time in her father’s transportation business in Houston. “My husband could be with us. We could focus on the well-being of our children.”
Every immigration benefit — even those as sweeping as Biden’s election-year offer — have cutoff dates and other eligibility requirements. In September, the Democratic president expanded temporary status for nearly 500,000 Venezuelans who were living in the United States on July 31, 2023. Those who had arrived a day later were out of luck.
The Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has shielded hundreds of thousands of people from deportation who came to the United States as young children and is popularly known as DACA, required applicants be in the United States on June 15, 2012 and have been in the country continuously for the previous five years.
About 1.1 million spouses in the country illegally are married to U.S. citizens, according to advocacy group FWD.us., meaning hundreds of thousands won’t qualify because they were in the United States less than 10 years.
Immigration advocates were generally thrilled with the scope of Tuesday’s announcement, just as Biden’s critics called it a horribly misguided giveaway.
Angelica Martinez, 36, wiped away tears as she sat next to her children, ages 14 and 6 — watched Biden’s announcement at the Houston office of FIEL, an immigrant advocacy group. A U.S. citizen since 2013, she described a flood of emotions, including regret for when her husband couldn’t travel to Mexico for his mother’s death five years ago.
“Sadness, joy all at the same time,” said Martinez, whose husband came to Houston 18 years ago.
Brenda Valle of Los Angeles, whose husband has been a U.S. citizen since 2001 and, like her, was born in Mexico, has renewed her DACA permit every two years. “We can start planning more long-term, for the future, instead of what we can do for the next two years,” she said.
Magdalena Gutiérrez of Chicago, who has been married 22 years to a U.S. citizen and has three daughters who are U.S. citizens, said she had “a little more hope” after Biden’s announcement. Gutiérrez, 43, is eager to travel more across the United States without fearing an encounter with law enforcement that could lead to her being deported.
Allyson Batista, a retired Philadelphia teacher and U.S. citizen, married her Mexican husband 20 years ago, recalled being told by lawyer that he could leave the country for 10 years or “remain in the shadows and wait for a change in the law.”
“Initially, when we got married, I was naive and thought, ‘OK, but I’m American. This isn’t going to be a problem. We’re going to fix this,’” Batista said. “I learned very early on that we were facing a pretty dire circumstance and that there would be no way for us to move forward in an immigration process successfully.”
The couple raised three children who are pursuing higher education. Batista is waiting for the details of how her husband can apply for a green card.
“I’m hopeful,” Batista said. “The next 60 days will really tell. But, obviously more than thrilled because every step forward is a step towards a final resolution for all kinds of immigrant families.”
About 50,000 noncitizen children with parents who are married to U.S. citizen could also potentially qualify, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. Biden also announced new regulations that will allow some DACA beneficiaries and other young immigrants to more easily qualify for long-established work visas.
JUNE 18, 2024:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is taking an expansive, election-year step to offer relief to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status in the U.S. — aiming to balance his own aggressive crackdown on the border earlier this month that enraged advocates and many Democratic lawmakers.
The White House announced Tuesday (June 18, 2024) 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 eventually, citizenship. The move could affect upwards of 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 qualifying immigrant’s application is approved, he or she would have three years to apply for a green card, and receive a temporary work permit and be shielded from deportation in the meantime.
About 50,000 noncitizen children with a parent who is married to a U.S. citizen could also potentially qualify for the same process, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the proposal on condition of anonymity. There is no requirement on how long the couple must have been married, and no one becomes eligible after Monday. That means immigrants who reach that 10 year mark any time after June 17, 2024, will not qualify for the program, according to the officials.
Senior administration officials said they anticipate the process will be open for applications by the end of the summer, and fees to apply have yet to be determined.
Biden will speak about his plans at a Tuesday afternoon event at the White House, which 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 for young immigrants who lack legal status.
White House officials privately encouraged Democrats in the House, which is in recess this week, to travel back to Washington to attend the announcement.
The president will also announce new regulations that will allow certain DACA beneficiaries and other young immigrants to more easily qualify for long-established work visas. That would allow qualifying immigrants to have protection that is sturdier than the work permits offered by DACA, which is currently facing legal challenges and is no longer taking new applications.
The power that Biden is invoking with his Tuesday announcement for spouses is not a novel one. The policy would expand on authority used by presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to allow “parole in place” for family members of military members, said Andrea Flores, a former policy adviser in the Obama and Biden administrations who is now a vice president at FWD.us, an immigration advocacy organization.
The parole-in-place process allows qualifying immigrants to get on the path to U.S. permanent residency without leaving the country, removing a common barrier for those without legal status but married to Americans. Flores said it “fulfills President Biden’s day one promise to protect undocumented immigrants and their American families.”
Tuesday’s announcement comes two weeks after Biden unveiled a sweeping crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border that effectively halted asylum claims for those arriving between officially designated ports of entry. Immigrant-rights groups have sued the Biden administration over that directive, which a senior administration official said Monday had led to fewer border encounters between ports.
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