Half a million migrants could obtain US citizenship according to new Biden plan

President Joe Biden will propose a big project in an election year to possibly offer relief to thousands of immigrants without a residence permit in the United States, in an attempt to balance the aggressive border restrictions announced this month, which outraged migrant advocates and many Democratic lawmakers.

The White House announced Tuesday that the government will allow in the coming months some spouses of U.S. citizens without legal status to apply for permanent residency and, later, citizenship. It is estimated that the initiative could affect almost half a million immigrants, according to high-level officials.

To apply, a person must have been in the United States for a minimum of 10 years as of Monday and be married to a U.S. citizen. If her application is approved, the person would have three years to apply for a permanent residence permit and would receive a temporary work permit, in addition to being protected from deportation during the process.

Some 50,000 noncitizen children with a parent married to a U.S. citizen could also follow the same process, according to senior officials who briefed reporters on the proposal on condition of anonymity. There is no requirement for how long the couple must be married and no one will be eligible after Monday. That means immigrants who reach that 10-year mark in the country any time after June 17, 2024 will no longer be able to participate in the program, according to officials.

Government members said they expected the application process to open at the end of the summer, with applicable fees still to be determined.

Biden will announce the new program Tuesday afternoon at a White House event organized to celebrate 12 years of the popular Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program from the era of former President Barack Obama that offered protections against deportation to some young immigrants.

White House officials privately urged Democratic members of the House of Representatives, which is on recess this week, to travel back to Washington to attend the announcement.

Biden is also expected to announce a policy to make DACA recipients eligible for visas, rather than the temporary work authorization they currently receive, according to two of the people briefed. That would give them stronger protection than the current DACA permits, which face legal challenges and do not accept new applicants.

The power that Biden wields in his Tuesday announcement about spouses is not new. The measure would expand an authority used by former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama to allow temporary stay in the country for military family members, said Andrea Flores, a former policy adviser in the Obama and Biden administrations who is now vice president. from FWD.us, an immigrant advocacy organization.

The temporary stay process allows eligible immigrants to seek permanent residency without having to leave the country, eliminating a common obstacle for people without residency permits but who are married to Americans. Flores noted that “delivers on Biden’s first day promise to protect undocumented immigrants and their American families.”

People who are in the country illegally and marry U.S. citizens have to leave for years to obtain legal status. Claudia Zúniga, of Houston, married a man who had been in the United States since 2007, but who left for Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, after getting married in 2017 to wait until he can legally return.

Zúniga, 35, said that his family’s life “took a 180 degree turn” when her husband moved to Mexico. Meet her husband “It would be a dream come true. “My husband could be with us.”

Two weeks ago, Biden announced strict controls at the US-Mexico border, effectively halting asylum claims for people arriving between officially designated entry points. Immigrant rights groups have sued the government over that decree, which a senior official said has reduced encounters with people arriving between access points.

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