Hey What If We Let People's Undocumented Husbands And Wives Stay In America? — Joe Biden
Nice time!
The White House today announced a new plan that will create a pathway to citizenship for about half a million undocumented immigrants who are married to US citizens. The program, framed as a move to keep families together, will let qualifying applicants get a work permit while they apply for permanent US residency (a green card), and once they have that, they will be eligible to become citizens after three years.
The announcement comes as Biden marks the 12th anniversary of Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order, which allowed work permits and protection from deportation for folks who were brought to the US without papers when they were children. The new policy Biden’s announcing today will also extend work permits and protection from deportation to about 50,000 noncitizen children of immigrants who are married to citizens, as well as streamlining legal issues for some DACA recipients.
Biden will mark the DACA anniversary and announce the new program live from the White House at 2:45 EDT today, and we’ll put up a livestream for you shortly before. (Correction/Update: We originally had that wrong because “time zones” confuse us. 2:45 PM EDT is right. Regret the error, etc.)
Donald Trump, you’ll recall, tried to abolish DACA and deport hundreds of thousands of people who came forward to apply, but the obvious unfairness of that shit led to court injunctions; a federal judge eventually ruled that the Obama executive order was unlawful — QED, since it was an executive order from Obama. But the judge allowed those already registered under DACA to work and not be deported while the matter makes its way through the courts, a process that’s still dragging on.
Very much aware that Republicans hope to win votes this fall by stirring up fear of immigrants, the White House press release on the new policy starts out by reviewing actions Biden has taken to address border issues, and notes that Republicans in the House have voted twice against a bipartisan immigration reform law that passed in the Senate.
Only after calling attention to Biden’s new restrictions on asylum requests by people who cross outside ports of entry does the announcement point out that the immigration issue has nuances — a bold position in the face of Donald Trump’s pledge to ban all nuances if he is elected.
President Biden believes that securing the border is essential. He also believes in expanding lawful pathways and keeping families together, and that immigrants who have been in the United States for decades, paying taxes and contributing to their communities, are part of the social fabric of our country. The Day One immigration reform plan that the President sent to Congress reflects both the need for a secure border and protections for the long-term undocumented.
But since congressional Republicans refuse to vote on any immigration reforms that aren’t from Trump, Biden’s using executive action to “bring peace of mind and stability to Americans living in mixed-status families.”
Normally, when a noncitizen marries a US citizen, they can qualify for permanent residency and then citizenship fairly easily. But those who are in the US without papers have until now had to leave the US for 10 years and then apply to come back and join their citizen spouses. The new program will get rid of that penalty, at least for certain cases.
To qualify for the program, noncitizens must, as of yesterday, June 17, 2024,
have been living in the US for at least 10 years, and
have been married to a US citizen before that date.
They also have to meet all the other usual requirements for a green card, like passing a criminal background check, not being a war criminal, and so on. Yes, we also still ban members of the Communist Party.
Applicants will have three years to apply for a green card, and can get permission to work legally in the meantime. Undocumented kids of undocumented spouses can also apply, but have to be under the age of 21. Once applicants receive residency, they would then be able to apply for citizenship in three years, a little faster than the usual requirement of five years.
The White House estimates that on average, those who’ll qualify for the new program have already been in the US for 23 years, for all the good that’ll do in arguing that the program will attract more migrants bent on taking our jobs and living on welfare at the same time.
There will of course be instant lawsuits because shouldn’t we tear apart families more, but as the Washington Post reports (gift link), the administration is citing as legal authority the “parole in place” option for allowing immigrants to be in the US, which is
already allowed in federal law and therefore potentially insulated against any court challenges.
“Parole’s been around for decades and decades and used in many different contexts,” said Kerri Talbot, executive director of the Immigration Hub, an advocacy group. “I think the courts will recognize the importance of having that power.”
That’s no guarantee under the Supreme Court of Nuts, of course, so we’ll have to see how this plays out.
The Post also profiles the case of one immigrant who plans to apply, 27-year-old attorney Foday Turay, who was invited to the announcement ceremony today. Turay, who’s from Sierra Leone, was approved for DACA 12 years ago, allowing him to finish high school, college, and law school without fear of deportation, but DACA doesn’t provide a pathway to citizenship, so he’s applying for the new program as well. He is married to a US citizen, has a 10-month-old son who’s a citizen, and currently works as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia.
Turay said his mother fled Sierra Leone first because she qualified to be a refugee, but he said she could not bring him with her immediately. She left him in the care of his grandmother and sent for him when the woman grew sickly; she later died. […]
“It’s absurd that I’m still dealing with all this,” he said. “Instead of me focusing on victims of crime, I’m here trying to get relief to stay.”
Well all that’s fine and well, but wouldn’t it be better to tear his family apart and deport him to Sierra Leone to teach the child version of himself some respect for the law? Oh, also, the law doesn’t apply to true patriots like Donald Trump or the January 6 insurrectionists.
[White House / WaPo (gift link) / NBC News / Photo: Sue Myatt, Creative Commons License 2.0
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This is good. There, I said it and I feel better.
I can't see it without an eventual eyeroll and "FFS" under my breath.
These people are here. They're working. Our economy absolutely depends on their labor. They and their families, net/net, pay in far more to the US government and overall economy than a lot of us who are here lawfully. Our laws are arbitrary and stupid, and always have been. The Southern border cannot be secured. We put it right in between where people live and where they have to work; and it's too long and too rugged unless we put our entire military on that border. Which would probably be better for our national security than having them all over the world, especially in places where they aren't wanted; but still idiotic.
Nobody has ever been able to explain to me what the actual problem is, that couldn't be solved by just giving everyone who wants a job a Social Security number and forcing employers to not steal their tax withholding.
Unless and until we start jailing CEOs for employing people unlawfully, we're not serious. So, if we're not serious, at least we shouldn't break up families and waste untold resources making people miserable when all they want to do is work and take care of their families.
So yeah. This is good. But Jeez. What, we want a medal for doing less of stupid shit?
Biden's policy on immigration, while it seems to confuse a lot of his detractors, is rather exactly where the median American is on this issue--increase legal immigration, strict enforcement of border crossings to crack down on illegal immigration, and implement this in an efficient and humane way so as not to break up families or punish children who are crossing now or who came here long ago.
It'd be nice if we had a functioning Congress that could pass legislation enabling this, but short of that it will mean doing as much of this as possible through executive action.
Remember the alternative under Trump--inefficient enforcement spackled with random cruelty under the leadership of people who have no idea what the fuck they're doing, and Stephen "Those Dead Nurses Were in My Trunk When I Bought the Car" Miller.