EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Immigration advocates say executive action widely expected to be announced by the Biden administration on Tuesday enjoys wide support among voters in swing states and mixed-status families with an undocumented parent or children.
Groups including American Families United, FWD.us, and the American Business Immigration Coalition say they have been lobbying for years for changes in federal law to streamline immigration status adjustment for undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens. National news reports say the Biden administration is poised to announce such changes on Tuesday.
The action would come days after the 12th anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. That leads the advocates to be optimistic about additional benefits for at least some of the 800,000 DACA beneficiaries. That could mean allowing them to leave the country without losing their protected status, or transition faster from DACA to work visas and eventual lawful permanent residence.
Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, said it won’t be clear until the announcement how many of the 1.1 million undocumented spouses nationwide could benefit from the order. He estimated it could be around 500,000.
“For those who have been in the country continuously for at least 10 years and are married (to a U.S. citizen) as of June 1 or whatever the date, this will allow people to have a pathway; it will allow folks to get protection,” Schulte said Monday in a teleconference with reporters. “For a lot of folks this means that instead of going to another country and wait 10 years away from their families, they could do parole in place. We think this is pretty common sense.”
Marrying a U.S. citizen is not the fast-track pathway to getting permanent legal residence and eventual U.S. citizenship that most people imagine, said Ashley DeAzevedo, president of American Families United. If the man or woman an American citizen marries came into the country without authorization, he or she must request parole, and that could mean waiting outside the United States for up to 10 years for the parole period to end, she said.
The advocates anticipate changes – whether an executive order or administrative adjustments to current laws – could provide “parole in place” to qualifying, lawfully married spouses. That would spare moms and dads the grief and hardship of years away from their children, or of having to take them to another country before getting permanent legal residence.
“During his campaign (President Biden) said, ‘I will not separate families.’ Now it’s time for him to make good on that promise,” DeAzevedo said.
Immigration advocates say they expect the order to be challenged in court by conservative lawmakers or groups opposed to illegal immigration. But they said that will have a political cost for opponents in a presidential election year.
“Americans support this. Seventy-six percent of likely voters in swing states support creating a pathway to citizenship for those who have been living, working, and paying taxes like everybody else,” said Rebecca Shi, executive director of the American Business Immigration Coalition. Some swing states include Arizona, Nevada, where a third of the population is Hispanic. The Pew Research Center says those states have a substantial undocumented population.
Shi said the legalization of undocumented spouses would pump billions into the economy as they join the workforce or get better jobs, and that a coalition of thousands of American employers and hundreds of mayors and lawmakers support the expected executive order.
An independent June 6 poll by Pew Research Center found that 59 percent of registered voters nationwide say undocumented immigrants living in the United States should be allowed to stay in the country legally. Thirty-six percent agree they should be allowed to apply for citizenship while 22 percent say they should only be granted legal permanent residency.
The same poll found 41 percent of voters said undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be allowed to stay in the country legally and most of those said they should be deported.