Joe Biden relaxes visa rules for married illegals

Program offers work permits, deportation protections and a path to citizenship.

Joe Biden marks the 12th anniversary of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals at the White House on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

US President Joe Biden has launched a new immigration program that provides a path to ­citizenship for hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the country illegally who are married to American citizens.

Mr Biden on Tuesday night announced the counterweight to his crackdown on those crossing the border illegally alongside US citizens who, ­because of arcane immigration rules, haven’t been able to sponsor their spouses for green cards.

The program has the potential to benefit immigrants who have been living in the country at least a decade, offering them work permits, deportation protections – and a route for them to apply for green cards, which is the pathway to citizenship. The application process is expected to open by the end of the northern summer, an administration official said.

The Biden administration has been struggling to address immigration, a hugely divisive issue for many Americans ahead of ­November’s presidential election.

“We can both secure the border and provide legal pathways to citizenship, but we have to acknowledge the patience of goodwill the American people is being tested by their fears at the border,” Mr Biden said at the White House.

The program’s size would make it one of the largest immigration initiatives in recent decades, rivalled only by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that former president Barack Obama created to benefit Dreamers in 2012. The White House marked the 12-year anniversary of that program, known as DACA, at the event on Tuesday.

Two weeks ago, M Biden ­announced, in an election-year gamble to reduce illegal crossings, one of his harshest immigration policies to date: a blanket asylum ban on immigrants crossing the border illegally. The President’s advisers have thought for months that, to avoid further angering immigration advocates and Latino voters with family members lacking a legal status, new border restrictions ought to be paired with a sweetener to benefit longtime immigrants already living in the US.

The President’s team homed in on the idea of providing immigration relief to spouses because a much smaller version of the program already had existed for a decade for military families, ­according to people familiar with the discussions. His advisers also pointed to internal Democrat polling that found that most Americans support granting legal status to spouses of US citizens, even if they entered the country ­illegally.

The new program also has the benefit of targeting a population that immigration advocates have told the White House had been feeling neglected. Though the ­administration has created several initiatives to grant more than a million newly arriving immigrants work permits, immigrants without permanent legal status who have been living in the US for decades – who are primarily ­Mexican – haven’t benefited.

Even if a migrant who entered the country via the southern border marries a US citizen, the law says he or she must first leave the country for 10 years before becoming eligible for a green card.

Ahead of the announcement, Republicans attacked the idea as a form of mass amnesty.

M Biden’s new program is ­underpinned by a provision of ­immigration law known as parole in place, which essentially allows the government to “admit” these immigrants legally, overriding their illegal entry. That makes it much easier to apply for a green card and can’t easily be undone by Donald Trump should he be elected to a second term. And, while immigrants apply for permanent residency, the parole in place grants them deportation relief and access to a work permit.

But, because of the particular mechanism the administration is using, the program won’t benefit spouses living outside the country or those living in the US illegally who overstayed visas.

The Wall Street Journal