WaPo (“Biden to waive penalties for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens“):
President Biden will clear the way on Tuesday for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens to apply for legal residency in one of the most expansive immigration programs of his presidency, administration officials said.
The policy shift is a bold move for the Democratic president months before the November elections, and a rebuke to congressional Republicans who have ignored his calls to expand border security and to create a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, many for decades.
Biden will unveil the policies at a celebration at the White House to mark the 12-year anniversary of another executive action taken to aid immigrants when he was vice president. On June 15, 2012, President Barack Obama said he would allow undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children to apply for work permits, a program that transformed hundreds of thousands of lives.
The White House had no immediate comment on Tuesday’s announcement.
Marrying an American citizen is typically a fast track to U.S. citizenship, but immigrants who cross the border illegally are subject to significant bureaucratic hurdles that have left them in limbo for years. Federal law requires such immigrants to leave the United States for up to 10 years and then apply to return, but immigrants call the penalty excessive.
Biden will allow undocumented spouses to apply for legal residency without having to leave the United States, a major relief for those who have jobs and are raising young children and worry that there is no guarantee they will be allowed back into the country.
[…]
About 500,000 undocumented spouses and 50,000 undocumented stepchildren of U.S. citizens are expected to be eligible to apply, according to a copy of the plan released by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. To be eligible, immigrants must have lived in the United States for at least a decade as of Monday, have been married by that date, and meet other requirements. Their immigrant children must be under 21 to qualify, officials said.
Officials said the majority of immigrants expected to benefit from the program are Mexican nationals who have lived in the United States for an average of 23 years. Applicants who are approved will have three years to apply for permanent residency, also known as a green card, and will have work permits in the meantime.
NYT (“Biden to Give Legal Protections to Undocumented Spouses of U.S. Citizens“):
President Biden on Tuesday will announce sweeping new protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have been living in the United States illegally for years but are married to American citizens, officials familiar with the plan said.
[…]
Under the policy, undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens will be shielded from deportation, provided work permits and given a pathway to citizenship. Officials briefed on the conversations said it could affect up to 500,000 undocumented spouses, although the exact scale of the program remained unclear.
[…]
Marrying an American citizen generally provides a pathway to U.S. citizenship. But people who crossed the southern border illegally — rather than arriving in the country with a visa — must return to their home countries to complete the process for a green card.
That means long separations from their spouses and families. The new program would allow families to remain in the country while they pursue legal status.
Officials briefed on the discussions said the announcement could amount to the most sweeping unilateral move by a president to provide relief to unauthorized immigrants since President Barack Obama implemented DACA. In a separate move on Tuesday, Mr. Biden is also expected to announce new ways to help people in DACA, known as Dreamers, gain access to work visas.
[…]
The decision comes as Mr. Biden tries to strike a balance on one of the most dominant political issues in 2024. Aware that many Americans want tougher policies on the border, Mr. Biden just two weeks ago announced a crackdown that suspended longtime guarantees that give anyone who steps onto U.S. soil the right to seek asylum here.
Almost immediately after he issued that order, White House officials began privately reassuring progressives that the president would also help undocumented immigrants who had been in the nation for years, according to people familiar with the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.
The program Mr. Biden is expected to announce on Tuesday is known as “parole in place,” which has been used in the past for other populations, like families of military members. It gives unauthorized immigrants in the United States protection from deportation for a period of time and access to a work permit.
Republicans have already assailed the policy.
“This is an attack on Democracy,” Stephen Miller, the architect of former President Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigration policy, said on social media on Monday.
The action could, however, help Mr. Biden in battleground states, like Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, each of which has more than 100,000 voters who live in “mixed status” households, according to the American Business Immigration Coalition, which represents hundreds of companies and supports the proposed policy change.
I’m more of a stickler for the rules than most but it’s really hard to make a good moral argument for deporting people married to American citizens because they didn’t have permission to be in the country at the time of the ceremony. While there are doubtless some small percentage of people who get married to game the immigration system, the overwhelming number of these people are simply building lives together and starting (or have long since started) families. Sending them back to their countries of origin, and thus separating them from their family, for months or even years would be unconscionably cruel.
At the same time, it’s not obvious to me that this is a sound political move. I’m skeptical that the number of “mixed families” in battleground states outweighs the percentage wanting to crack down harder on the border.
The newfangled site operating under the venerable Newsweek brand and other right-leaning sources are touting a new CBS/YouGov poll under headlines like “Majority of Hispanics Now Favor Mass Deportation.”
A recent poll found that a majority of Hispanic people favor the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
The CBS News/YouGov poll found that a majority of registered voters overall (62 percent) would favor the government starting “a new national program to deport all undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S. illegally.” Thirty-eight percent said they would oppose it.
The survey polled 1,615 registered voters between June 5 and 7, and had a margin of error of 3.8 points.
Notably, the poll found that mass deportation was popular with Hispanics, with 53 percent saying they would favor such a program and 47 percent saying they would oppose it. White people were more supportive of mass deportations, with 67 percent saying they would back the program, and 33 percent saying they would oppose it. Among Black people, it was 47 percent in favor and 53 percent opposed.
An Axios poll published in April also found that a majority of Americans support the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, including 45 percent of Latinos who were in favor of such a measure.
To be sure, there are umpteen caveats about polling on a headline policy issue, let alone parsing subsamples. But there’s no reason at all to doubt that Americans writ large are frustrated by our border policies and, unfair though it may be, blame Biden as the incumbent President.
Even the Newsweek report notes that the polling is not necessarily indicative of real policy preferences:
But a “much smaller portion of Americans who purport to favor mass deportation of undocumented immigrants would support what it would practically entail,” Thomas Gift, an associate professor of political science and director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, U.K., told Newsweek.
“Showing papers on-demand. Racial profiling. A huge increase in the number and scale of ICE raids. But the polling is reflective of just how dissatisfied American voters are with the failure of both Republicans and Democrats to secure the border. Immigration is again surging to the top of the ‘most important problem’ list because Washington has shown itself completely ill-equipped to execute common-sense immigration enforcement.”
Which is a point Steven and I have been making for years, since well before Trump got into politics. It’s all well and good to say we should send illegal immigrants home en masse, it’s quite another to actually do it. Even aside from the positive impacts these workers have on our economy and the moral issues surrounding upending their lives, sometimes after years or even decades of building roots here, there is no magic wand solution. Rounding up hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people involuntarily would be a brutal policy logistically. And would essentially make anyone who “looks Hispanic,” regardless of their legal status, targets of constant harassment.
Biden is on the right side of the issue, wanting to toughen border enforcement and end the abuse of the asylum system while treating folks who have been here for years in violation of our immigration laws with some sense of humanity. We’ll see whether that pays off politically.
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Author: James Joyner
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