I mentioned this the other day but now it’s official. President Biden is announcing today that he will legalize the undocumented immigrant spouses of American citizens:
President Biden on Tuesday is announcing a large-scale immigration program that will offer legal status and a streamlined path to U.S. residency and citizenship to roughly half a million unauthorized immigrants married to American citizens.
The Department of Homeland Security policy will allow these immigrants to apply for work permits and deportation protections if they have lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years and meet other requirements, senior administration officials said during a call with reporters.
Perhaps most importantly, however, Mr. Biden’s move will unlock a path to permanent residency — colloquially known as a green card — and ultimately U.S. citizenship for many of the program’s beneficiaries. The policy, if upheld in court, would be the largest government program for undocumented immigrants since the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, which currently shields 528,000 so-called “DREAMers” who were brought to the U.S. as children from deportation.
Mr. Biden is slated to announce the measure at a White House event on Tuesday marking the 12th anniversary of DACA, alongside another move to make it easier for employers to sponsor “DREAMers” and other undocumented immigrants for work visas.
You will note that this, like all policies, must be upheld in court so who knows if it will actually come to pass. (And people will inevitably blame Joe Biden for being the failure who couldn’t get it done.) It would be very much be preferable to have this done legislatively but I think we know that MAGA will not let that happen right now.
This is the right thing to do. If someone has been in the US for 10 years and is married to an American — and in many cases has American children — they should be allowed to stay and work here. It’s the practical and humane thing to do.
The other side, by the way, wants to deport them and if they have to deport their American spouses and kids too, well that would just be collateral damage. Trump is all prepared for it saying often on the campaign trail that they’ll be deporting “beautiful women and children.”