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Joe Biden has offered up to 500,000 undocumented spouses of Americans an easier path to legal status and US citizenship, removing the threat of deportation and marking the country’s most significant reform to immigration policy in years.
The US president announced the move on Tuesday, calling it a “common sense fix” to the fear and uncertainty experienced in mixed-status families that streamlines an existing immigration process.
It would allow the spouses to apply for lawful permanent residency without having to leave the country. It would give them immediate permission to work and a first step to a green card, or permanent residency, and citizenship.
The new executive action marks the most far-reaching US immigration reform since former president Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2012, which protected from deportation people brought to the country as children.
Biden’s announcement came as he tries to pacify the progressive wing of his Democratic party while also deflecting attacks from Donald Trump, his 2024 presidential election rival, over the rise in immigration at the US’s southern border.
The president said he refused to believe that an embrace of immigration would compromise the US’s border security. “They’re false choices. We can both secure the border and provide legal pathways to citizenship.”
The move also follows Biden’s decision two weeks ago to launch a major crackdown on illegal immigration from Mexico, limiting migrants’ ability to request asylum if they have crossed unlawfully and enabling their expedited deportation.
A surge in illegal border crossings during Biden’s presidency has become one of his biggest political vulnerabilities, putting him under intense pressure to act.
But the Biden crackdown has also risked alienating some progressive Democratic voters already displeased with US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, among other issues.
The new programme “doesn’t tear families apart”, Biden said, referring to Trump-era border policies criticised by Democrats as inhumane. “When he was president, he separated families and children at the border.”
Biden said that “the patience and goodwill of the American people is being tested by fears at the border”, which “are the fears my predecessor’s trying to play on when he says immigrants . . . are [poisoning] the blood of the country”.
Henry Cuellar, a Democratic lawmaker from Texas praised Biden’s announcement on X.
“These executive actions will help keep American families united and strengthen our economy,” he said. “We must find bipartisan solutions to address wider immigration challenges, including border security.”
Administration officials said the programme was intended to bring “stability to Americans living in mixed-status families” by offering 500,000 undocumented spouses of US citizens the right to apply for lawful permanent residency without having to leave the country.
If accepted, the spouses would have a three-year window in which to apply for a green card and be granted work authorisation in the interim. Green card holders have a pathway to US citizenship.
The Trump campaign slammed Biden’s policy as a “mass amnesty plan” serving as “another invitation for illegal immigration” that would “undoubtedly lead to a greater surge in migrant crime”.
Also on X, Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, attacked the expected announcement as an “unconstitutional amnesty to illegal aliens during a border invasion”.
US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Republican, accused the president of “trying to play both sides” by “[pretending] to crack down on the open-border catastrophe” while “granting amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens”.
Under current US law, many non-citizen spouses must apply for a green card from abroad, meaning some who are eligible to seek it do not do so for fear of leaving their families and homes.
To qualify for the programme, the undocumented spouses must have lived in the country for at least a decade as of June 17. Others who have been in the US for less time will become eligible when they hit their own 10-year mark.
An additional 50,000 children of parents married to US citizens will qualify for the programme.
The “majority” of people qualifying for the programme were likely to be from Mexico and northern Central America, said a senior Biden administration official.
The programme will also make it easier for Daca recipients who have degrees from US institutions of higher education to get work visas more quickly.
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