The president of United States, Joe Bidenannounced this Tuesday a new plan to regularize more than half a million migrants who have been living and working in the country for years.
The program will primarily benefit people who do not have legal status and are married to Americans and comes in the middle of an election year in which migration management has become a central issue for voters.
What does it consist of?
The program is based on a legal figure known as ‘parole’, which is a temporary permit to remain in the United States, offering protection against deportation and, in this case, the possibility of obtaining a work permit.
With this permit, which will be valid for three years, migrants who entered the country irregularly and are married to US citizens can apply for residency and, eventually, citizenship.
In theory, undocumented people can obtain residency if they marry an American. However, to do so they must leave the country and go to an embassy, which carries the risk of being banned from entering again for periods of 3 to 10 years, in retaliation for having been in the United States without legal status.
This ‘parole’ eliminates the need to leave the country and allows migrants to wait for the Government to grant them a residence permit without having to leave their families for an indefinite period.
Who can benefit?
People who are married to a U.S. citizen before June 17, 2024 and have lived in the country for a minimum of 10 years.
In turn, also children under 21 years of age of the spouses of Americans who do not have legal status either.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) estimates that more than 500,000 adults and about 50,000 minors will be able to apply for this permit. The majority are of Mexican nationality or from northern Central American countries.
From when will it come into force?
During a speech at the White House, Biden He said he hopes the program comes into effect “this summer”.
The technical process for new measures to become official can take more than three to four months, as Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an expert at the American Immigration Council, explained to EFE.
How will the process work?
The Government has not yet published instructions or guides on how this new program will work, but it is not the first time that ‘parole’ has been used to provide immigration relief to people in the United States.
For example, there is currently a similar program that gives permission to stay in the country to family members of military personnel, known as “military parole in place”.
The idea with this new plan is to grant the spouses of Americans a ‘parole’ that gives them legal status in the United States and from there they can begin the process to obtain permanent residence, according to immigration law experts explained to EFE.
The path to residency, however, is not immediate nor would it give people the right to vote quickly, as members of the Republican Party and former President Donald Trump’s campaign have noted.
The lack of resources at the Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency in charge of processing these permits, has resulted in long waits, even “several years”, for those who apply for a residence permit, stressed Elissa Steglich, director of the legal clinic at the University of Texas at Austin.
And even after obtaining the ‘green card’, as the permanent residence permit is known, spouses of citizens must wait at least three years to be able to apply for citizenship.
“There is no way that the people who will benefit from this program (…) will be able to vote in the next election”, stated Steglich.
Source: Gestion
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